Dear Ruth,

I have enjoyed reading your answers to the questions posed to you. I particularly enjoyed your response to the new clinician. As a parent of a child with a congenital brain condition, it is wonderful to hear of professionals that consider themselves people first and desire to see their clients as people first.

I have truly enjoyed the "Reading" section of this website. I began employing many of these techniques with our daughter when she was a year old, to help her understand language as we applied speech therapy. We read to her for over an hour and she cries when we stop. We read and leave words blank and she fills in the blank. The marvelous result has been that she read her first word at the age of 19 months, and he can read at least 36 words at the age of two and a half. I am currently showing her consonant blends and she particularly likes the TH.

She says many single words, but has only grouped words occasionally, such as "I’m hungry" and "I love you". Do you have any simple tips that might be useful for helping her to advance to the next level?

J.M.

Dear J.M.,

Thank you for the nice comments. It sounds like you are helping your daughter enormously. Be sure to keep asking her speech/language pathologist for ongoing guidance.

One suggestion that I give parents for helping children expand their utterances is to model for them. If for example the next level in terms of length would be two words, I ask the parents to repeat the single words the child has said, and then model an appropriate two-word utterance that they might use in the situation. Find ways to repeat it a lot. For example: "Milk!" says the child after finishing her cup. "Milk," you agree. "More milk. More milk?" you ask. [Looking in refrigerator, thinking out loud] "M-o-r-e . . . m-i-l-k . . . Ah! More milk!" [pouring] "More milk," you observe.

Best Wishes,
Ruth Alice Jurey, M.S., C.C.C.
Speech/Language Pathologist