Communicaid - Private Speech and Language Therapy

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Communicaid - Private Speech and Language Therapy

Private Speech and Language Therapy for children in East Kent.

I specialise in supporting the communication skills of autistic children, with or without a diagnosis, to reach their full potential.

15/03/2024

inding the right time to model self-advocacy gestalts can be so hard.

We normally model at the time & in the situation where we think the child is trying to say a particular phrase but when a child is becoming upset & dysregulated is probably not the time to model gestalts.

So here are some alternative ideas
that might help.

Would you add anything else?

08/03/2024

So much of SLT assessment in the past has relied on a person being able to physically show that they’ve understood us by pointing to or picking up the right picture/object, for example.

Neurodivergence can mean differences in the development of a person’s motor skills & mean that they find it hard to control their body or to get it to do what they want it to do.

Someone’s motor planning ability should not be used to determine their cognitive ability. The least harmful assumption is that these two skills are not linked. We start from the standpoint of presuming competence & always work from there.

26/02/2024

We know it’s important that children have ways of saying ‘no’ to things that they’re really struggling with but sometimes it can be tricky to honour that ‘no’.

For example, there might be different people with different needs all sharing a space (some love loud noises, some hate them) or it might be a question of safety & keeping someone physically safe.

Either way, acknowledging that you’ve heard & understood a child’s ‘no’ with a phrase such as:

👉 ‘I hear you’
👉 ‘ I hear that you don’t like it’
👉 ‘you’ve said no’

can help a child to feel heard.

Sometimes it’s how you make someone feel that has the biggest impact.

Any more tips for supporting self-advocacy?

22/02/2024

The word ‘model’ can sound quite formal, as if you need to have all the answers & all the knowledge before you can ‘model’ using a communication device to someone else.

I really try to steer away from the word model & encourage a more relaxed approach. Whether it’s for 30 seconds or 3 minutes at a time, just give it a go.

You are showing that it doesn’t matter if it takes us a while to find exactly what we want when we use AAC, that exploring & experimenting is a totally valid part of the process.

What’s more, every time you pick up the device you are demonstrating that’s it’s valued as a way to communicate & that is so much more important than always knowing exactly where all the buttons are.

‘Just give it a go!’

What’s worked for you when starting to use AAC?

15/02/2024

This is a communication book for a GLP in stage 1.

It has 8 pages for 8 different reasons a child might have for telling us things. The different coloured tabs around the edges of the book lead to the different pages e.g ‘describing’, ‘transitions’, ‘shared joy’ etc.

In this example the dark blue squares were thought to be the most meaningful gestalts for this particular child & the ones being modeled most to begin with. As this communication book was being used across settings it was an easy way to highlight those.

Points to consider when making a communication book:

👉 if the same phrase is on different pages keep it in the same place to help with your child’s motor planning.

👉 your child might need slightly different communication function pages to the ones shown here e.g. they might benefit from a page with gestalts for ‘sensory needs’ or ‘social chat’. That’s absolutely fine, just make sure there’s variety in their book.

Feel free to ask any questions!

Credit to aac_innovations for the template.

05/02/2024

A round up of free resources to learn about gestalt language processing.

If you know any more feel free to share in the comments! 👇

01/02/2024

I get asked this question a lot so I thought an introductory post about what gestalt language processing even is might be useful.

So much more to share with you about GLP coming very soon!

Follow me for more! ❤️

29/01/2024

I was inspired by a post posted last week about stage 4 GLP so thought I’d give some examples from my own caseload!

I feel we talk a lot about the early GLP stages & maybe less about stage 4 + so thought these might be helpful.

Anymore examples from anyone are very welcome! ⬇️

18/01/2024

Even if children do have a gestalt/phrase for self advocacy they’re very often not easy for others to understand unless they know that child really well.

I see one child who asks for a particular Cocomelon song when he’s anxious & another who uses the phrase ‘put me down’ when she wants someone to stop doing something. As with many stage 1 gestalts the words themselves don’t necessarily convey the child’s underlying meaning for using the phrase but when anxiety is rising children need someone to quickly realise what is going on for them in order to be able to help them.

This is why modelling gestalts/phrases for self-advocacy that reflect what the child is actually trying to say can make such a difference.

Address

Canterbury

Website

http://Communicaid.uk/

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