Elevate Children's Therapy

12/02/2022

Great list of toys by age if you are unsure of what to get your child for Christmas 🎄 🎅🎁

Best Toys for Speech Therapy for Toddlers for Autism and Language Delays teachmetotalk.com Laura Mize

07/26/2022

Great information on SPD 🧠
https://www.facebook.com/100057862261072/posts/472268288045243/

03/31/2022

03/29/2022

Great tips for parents needing to transition from bottle and pacifier 🍼➡️🥤

🗣 Being a parent is H A R D, and there is so much information out there to navigate. Today Babbling Brook Speech and Language Therapy, PLLC and I are talking about prolonged use of pacifiers, bottles, and sippy cups, which can cause more harm than good if used for too long.

🦷: While it may seem unnecessary to take care of the teeth when babies don’t have any yet, promoting proper oral health and dentition can set the stage for facial growth, making sure that there is enough room in the mouth for adult teeth in the future, and for the tongue to assume its necessary resting posture in the palate. Extended use of the pacifier and bottles can lead to poor dentition, such as malocclusions, crooked teeth and tooth decay, improper growth of the jaw, improper positioning of the tongue and more.

‼️ Here are some other things that research has shown:
-Sucking is appropriate and typical for self-soothing in infants (& for decreasing the risk of SIDS), but prolonged sucking on pacifiers & bottles can place children more at risk for speech differences.
-Prolonged bottle use can lead to nutritional deficits (such as iron deficiency)
-Prolonged pacifier use is also linked to ear infections, and allergies

✅ What can you do instead?
-Start the weaning process early! Set your family up for success by allowing a LONG transition process, this way you don’t have to go cold turkey.
-Open & straw cups can be introduced at 6 months of age. Give a little breastmilk or formula in each every day to get babies accustomed to it. Skip the sippy cups and 360’s as they promote improper drinking patterns.
-Give appropriate mouthing toys such as chewy tubes, grabbers, and tethers. Aim for the ones that can get deeper into the mouth rather than just at the front teeth to help your child practice chewing on the sides of the mouth.
-LEARN! There are a lot of wonderful family-facing resources out there for families to be PROACTIVE!
-Get support! A speech-language pathologist or occupational therapist trained in oral motor and infant feeding can help you navigate this time if you need. Never be afraid to reach out ❤️

🧠 We recognize that some neurodivergent children have strong sensory needs and routines. We encourage parents so work together with professionals to decide what is best for each individual child.

03/19/2022

Sitting down together for a meal is not only important for nutrition, but language as well 🍽🗣

♥️📖♥️March is and reading is ALWAYS a good thing, but here’s a startling fact: Researchers found that for young children, meal time conversation trumps even story time!

📖When you read aloud to your children, it supports language and literacy development, including exposing your child to atypical vocabulary or those words not used in common day-to-day interactions. But during dinner time conversation, young children are exposed to 1,000 rare words! That in turn supports reading development, and those children learn to read earlier than their peers.

🥰The kind of conversation around the table helps raise smarter kids too! Think about it...what did
you talk about last night at dinner? Most likely, you conveyed information via storytelling. You may have told your partner what your toddler did at the park that day or the unexpected sequence of events when they discovered a mud puddle! Mealtime conversation is most often conveyed via storytelling or narratives.

✨Soon, when your toddler enters preschool, they will be at a distinct advantage that will last into their teen years. Preschoolers who have strong storytelling skills have higher reading scores in high school!

🥳Learn more fascinating facts about communication and feeding young children in my new book,
Responsive Feeding: The Baby-First Guide to Stress-Free Weaning, Mealtime Bonding, and Life-Long
Health. Click 👇🏻
https://mymunchbug.com/books/



Snow, C. E., & Beals, D. E. (2006). Mealtime talk that supports literacy development. New Directions for
Child and Adolescent Development, 2006

Research: Family dinner improves literacy. (2020, August 31). Retrieved April 11, 2021, from
https://thefamilydinnerproject.org/blog/research-shows-family-dinner-improves-literacy/

Suggate, S., Schaughency, E., McAnally, H., & Reese, E. (2018). From infancy to adolescence: The
longitudinal links between vocabulary, early literacy skills, oral narrative, and reading
comprehension. Cognitive Development, 47, 82–95.

01/25/2022

360 although convient are not good for oral motor development. It is best to stick with open cups or straw cups 🥛🧋

07/19/2021

Often get asked which toys are best for various ages, here is a post with some great tips!
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=375402544017514&id=113195366904901

07/18/2021

Important reminders for pacifier use 👍👶
https://www.facebook.com/146340342073238/posts/6032549800118900/

🧐There’s a reason that most hospitals worldwide offer this shape pacifier. 🙇‍♀️Speech pathologists and feeding specialists know that ideally, babies need a cylindrical shape to let the sides of the tongue wrap around the ni**le for optimal mouth development. Flat or orthodontic ni**les don’t develop facial muscles in the same manner.
👉🏼No matter what, wean early, unless there is a medical reason not to do so. Consider your baby’s sensory system and readiness of course, but most babies are able to limit the use of a “paci” to bedtime at 6 months. They have lots of other ways to comfort themselves because they have learned to bond with you and bring other objects such as teethers to their mouths for oral input.
😫The longer we wait to wean, the harder it is on baby and parents. ANY pacifier will impact baby’s palate and facial development by age two, and even more so by age four.
😛HOWEVER, it’s the tongue placement
that is vital to consider. Babies who use ANY pacifier past the age of 12 months are at risk for
maintaining a low resting posture of the tongue, developing speech issues and maintaining an immature swallowing pattern that can lead to hesitant or picky eating. That low resting tongue posture contributes to creating a high narrow palate, which in turn changes baby’s facial features depending on frequency, duration and intensity of sucking.
💕So, please don’t wait. Wean early if you can. If your little munch bug is over a year old & using a paci, parent bravely and wean ASAP.
❤️Benefits of pacifiers:
👉🏼Reduced risk of SIDS up to 12 months (primarily under 6 months)
👉🏼Pain relief during minor medical procedures
👉🏼PREEMIES/NICU use: “Nonnutritive sucking is associated with shorter hospital stays, earlier transition to bottle feeding from enteral feeding, and improved bottle feeding”
Cochrane Review 2005 Pinelli et al
Sexton S, Natale R. Risks and benefits of pacifiers. Am Fam Physician. 2009

Click www.amazon.com/shop/mymunchbug for my favorite teethers and chewies to help wean!

04/03/2021

Important reminders about sippy cups! 🚫
https://www.facebook.com/146340342073238/posts/5503715566335662/

Sadly, the packaging on that spouted “sippy cup” is not telling you the truth. 😳Any cup with a spout (not a
straw) is a bottle.🍼
👉🏼We need to wean kids off the bottle shortly after their first birthday. What helps with the weaning process is to first teach straw drinking and coincide that with introducing an open cup.
🤦🏼‍♀️What does not help, AT ALL, is introducing a spouted sippy cup. Those spouts cause kids to jut their jaw forward and the tongue follows right along. We need the tongue to learn to BACK UP, RISE UP and develop a mature swallow pattern.
👶🏼Babies at 6 months are swallowing with a forward-backward motion, like drinking from a bottle.
👉🏼By 12 months, a more mature pattern should have developed where the tongue stays in place and then rises up to swallow while pressing on the ridged spot just above front
teeth. The tongue rises, pushes and propels back the food.
😛But if jaw and tongue are prevented from developing that pattern, it also can change facial development! Over time, when kids continue to suck this way, the palate will get higher and more narrow and the face will begin to elongate, pulling the outer “wings” of the eyelids downward , creating flatter cheeks and changing that beautiful face!😳
👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼Skip the spouted sippy cups. It’s in all my books, all my articles, all my teachings. But those darn things are still in every baby aisle, so I’m going to continue to spread this message.
❤️Caveat: Some kids with disabilities need these cups as part of their therapy program due to neurological
issues. That might be why a child has one, so there are always exceptions to a rule.

03/14/2021

Babies brains are growing so much during the first 3 years! Social interaction and play are so crucial to their development!

Health Screen Time for Babies Linked to Higher Risk of Autism-Like Symptoms Later in Childhood By: Greg Richter April 20, 2020 Sitting a baby in front of a tablet or television, as well as less parent-child play time, are associated with developing greater autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-like symptom...

07/20/2020

So important to get little ones drinking from open cup or straw cup sooner rather than later!

05/13/2020

So often parents ask me when they should be concerned about language development- and lots of times they are surprised by my answer because information online is SO confusing! Parents (AND yes, pediatricians) see milestones and often think “oh he’s almost there, he’s not that far off- we can just wait and see” - when really not meeting milestones is usually a good reason to get an evaluation. Because milestones and what the average child can do are NOT THE SAME THING. Not meeting milestones doesn’t necessarily mean a child will need speech therapy, but it DOES mean someone should be evaluating to determine a course of action. Can SLPs recommend waiting? ABSOLUTELY- because unlike pediatricians, we are specifically trained in this area and we know to look not only at milestones as compared to averages- but also how kids use communication skills, which is key! The range of typical is huge- but we definitely want to be giving intervention as early as we can to decrease the gap sooner and set kids up for success!

05/29/2019

Here is a tip for parents to build a child's language. The idea here is to add one thing to what your child says- expand their utterance. This works great for children of all ages who speak in single words AND those who speak in complete sentences.

05/18/2019

Did you know that the first type of cup that should be introduced to baby is an open cup? You can use it to introduce water to your baby around the same time as they start solids - around 6 months of age. They don’t need a lot! Around 1-2 oz/day at 6 months of age is enough, but having some to wash down food, prevent constipation and learning the skill of drinking from an open cup early on is important 🥛👶

Here’s why we want to start with an open cup right from the beginning:⠀
✔️ Practice transitioning off a bottle 🍼 and onto a cup starts NOW. It’s recommended to start transitioning off a bottle at 11-12 months, and it’s not always the easiest transition when your baby isn’t familiar with open cup drinking at all.⠀
✔️ Supports healthy cheek, tongue, jaw, lip and swallowing development⠀
✔️Drinking from a hard spout sippy cup instead can delay oral motor skill development (hello speech development!) and promote improper placement of the tongue when drinking⠀
✔️ It promotes drinking at scheduled meal and snack time🥛

04/19/2019

Can't stress it enough, avoid sippy cups if at all possible. Sippy cups cause delayed oral motor skills and speech development 👶🥤👍