Learn With Less

On this episode of Learn With Less, Ayelet shares a bit about what it is she does as a pediatric speech-language pathologist.

Below is the transcript of this episode’s “Developmental Thought,” a short excerpt from the full episode.

For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.

As I mentioned earlier in our episode, today I wanted to introduce you to a new periodic “series” of focused interviews with professionals who work with children in many different ways, and for many different reasons. There are a lot of reasons I think this is important. Primarily, as you all know, parent education is one of my main objectives.

I’d like to provide more education for families about the types of professionals that might work with young children, to bring light to some of the lesser understood but broadly used terminology out there, and to put certain myths or assumptions to rest.

Today, I want to tell you just a little bit about what I do in my role as a speech-language pathologist. And yes, that term is, depending on where you are in the world and who you’re talking to, totally interchangeable with the title, “speech therapist.” The problem is that a lot of what my work personally entails has little to do with the actual motor activity of speech! It’s much more about language and communication!

I mentioned before that my personal specialty and background is with pre-verbal and non-verbal children… So although I do work on modeling specific sounds or words, most of what I work on is developing a young child’s vocabulary, understanding of words, ability to communicate socially through gesture and symbolic language, and developing different kinds of play which support thinking and using language flexibly.

I also work with people who cannot use speech as their primary form of communication. Think of a person with an underlying motor disorder, such as cerebral palsy, autism, or Rett syndrome, which makes fine motor tasks like speaking, and sometimes coordinating movement for signing, difficult.

Motor disorders often make many types of movement difficult, and sometimes mean that the child is not able to or delayed in their ability to walk, or even to move their arms or other parts of their body in ways that their brain wants it to. Sometimes the signal from the brain to the body is disrupted or skewed, or sometimes, completely interrupted.

For children like these, alternative methods of communication are often necessary. I help to determine what type of system is most appropriate for the child, how they might access it, and then how to obtain and train the child, family and the child’s community on how to use that system to acquire language.

So, the term speech therapist for me is really a misnomer. I think many speech-language pathologists, especially who work more in a medical setting, are particular about the term “pathologist,” because we do so often work with medical pathologies. Often, the reason why someone needs therapy in the realm of speech, language, or communication is due to an underlying medical pathology… but I suppose that’s not always the case.

In early intervention, or the work focused on infants and toddlers up to the age of 3 years, there is not always a medical basis for a child’s delayed speech and language development. Sometimes it is about the child’s opportunities to interact meaningfully with a caregiver, sometimes it’s about a child’s access to their environment and to new experiences, and sometimes a child just needs a little extra time and focused attention.

I hope that shed a little bit of light on the field of speech-language pathology, and on my work in particular. Don’t hesitate to contact me if there is a type of professional out there who you would like to hear from (or if you yourself are a professional and would like to lend your voice and story to Learn With Less!).

You are welcome to email me at [email protected].

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

The post What Does A Pediatric Speech Pathologist Do? appeared first on Learn With Less.

On this episode of Learn With Less, Ayelet explores what it means to give the “right amount” of support when our young children are learning new skills. 

Below is the transcript of this week’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.

For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode. 

When trying a new skill, we know that infants and toddlers are more likely to imitate acts they see us doing when those tasks are of moderate difficulty. Research suggests that young children actually analyze the level of difficulty of a task before they even attempt to imitate us!

This relates to what is known in the field of psychology as the “zone of proximal development,” or the distance between what a child already knows to that which is completely unknown. When trying a new skill, we know that infants and toddlers are more likely to imitate acts they see us doing when those tasks are of moderate difficulty.

Research suggests that young children actually analyze the level of difficulty of a task before they even attempt to imitate us! This relates to what is known in the field of psychology as the “zone of proximal development,” or the distance between what a child already knows to that which is completely unknown.

Within this “zone,” are activities that interest our young children, and which can be done with guidance and encouragement. When given the appropriate level of assistance, we, the grown-ups, can slowly offer less and less assistance until the child can perform the task independently.

This is really important to keep in mind during interactive play moments we spend with our little ones. What we want to do is provide just the right amount of support – I like to call it, “channeling our inner Goldilocks” – not too much, not too little, but trying to find that sweet spot of helping foster independence and learning while feeling loved, supported and secure that makes our little ones feel juuuuust right.

Because they are paying attention – perhaps more so than we are – to how difficult it is for them to do what we’re asking them to do. Obviously, infants and toddlers, just like anybody else, are also going to base their participation in a particular activity on whether or not they actually find it interesting at that particular moment!

Let’s get back to our inner Goldilocks. We already mentioned that infants and toddlers are more likely to imitate or attempt new skills when they consider a task to be of moderate difficulty. Research also suggests that toddlers in the 12 – 18-month age range also imitate based on what they think adults intend to do. In other words, they’re already starting to infer what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it.

For instance, we push a button in order to turn on a light! That’s pretty substantial – this is a tiny human who’s likely just learning how to stand on their own two feet… and she is already making social inferences about what our intentions are, starting to understand pretty abstract notions of cause and effect, and anticipating our actions. Another reminder never to underestimate what’s going on in those powerful little brains!

So, when you’re performing household tasks, caregiving routines, or playing with your baby, narrate your actions, and tell her your intentions – for instance, “shake, shake, whooooosh! The sheet goes over the bed! Now we’ll finish making the bed.” And if your little one appears intrigued with what you’re doing, or the way you’re ‘playing,’ (say, she watches your movements as you build a tower with blocks, or as you pour water from a cup into a bowl), offer her a turn, while thinking about how to make the task slightly easier or slightly more difficult.

If you see or hear your baby imitate something you did or said, try doing it again, varying it slightly. This may help to keep your baby interested in what you’re doing, and will provide another similar task to imitate and learn from! Assuming she is physically able, your baby will imitate you when she is able and interested. Until then, try to model new ways of doing things – without placing the expectation for her to do them the same way – AND without completely doing them for her, by thinking about ways to simplify or reproduce parts of tasks to encourage her to participate.

G. Gergely, H. Bekkering, and I. Király “Rational Imitation in Preverbal Infants: Babies May Opt for a Simpler Way to Turn on a Light After Watching an Adult Do It,” Nature 415 (February 2002): 755–56.)

Harnick, Frances S. “The Relationship between Ability Level and Task Difficulty in Producing Imitation in Infants.” Child Development 49.1 (1978): 209-12. Web.

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

The post Using Scaffolding With Infants & Toddlers appeared first on Learn With Less.

What do the skills of matching, classifying and patterning have in common? What do these things involve and require when it comes to brain-building? How can we best support these developing skills in our infants and toddlers?

These are the topics we explore on this episode of Learn With Less!

Below is the transcript of this week’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.

For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.

Let’s get back to our original discussion topic, that of a few early cognitive and math skills – specifically, matching, classifying, and pattern-recognizing.

Matching involves an ability to perceive and take in aspects of objects in the environment, and the ability to start to match like items also indicates that the young child is starting to discern and understand the world by classifying “like” items in certain ways. 

Matching and classifying are both related to the activity of sorting, in that young children are constantly organizing life experiences, new words, objects, and people, and determining how all these things relate to each other, to themselves, and to the child. And classification is essentially the grouping and sorting of various characteristics…

When infants and toddlers start to explore, they begin to make classifications about their world, and determine how certain things are alike and how they are different – through tactile experiences, visual experiences, auditory experiences, movement experiences, oral experiences. This is why it is so important to follow your baby’s lead, and to provide your baby or young child with lots of different types of experiences.

This doesn’t have to equate to spending lots of money, buying lots of fancy toys, or traveling to exotic places. I’m talking about ensuring your baby gets time both inside and outside, in dirt and sand as well as on carpet and wood. With soft objects and hard ones, wet ones and dry ones, with lots of different colors and textures, sounds and people!

This is also why over-reliance on the television or any other screen is not conducive to learning. The only input the child receives is a two-dimensional image from a screen. We know that children do not learn or carry-over vocabulary from a screen, but instead, through interaction with a real-life person – like you! 

Talking, asking questions, singing or humming a tune, playing, modeling, and sometimes (more often than many of us might feel comfortable!) simply sitting back quietly, being present, and allowing our young children to problem-solve, listen to and recognize patterns in the environment, make connections, and imitate in their own time… these are the skills we as caregivers must build to give our young children a great start.

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

The post Infant & Toddler Math Concepts and Activities appeared first on Learn With Less.

Consider that even as adults, we struggle to understand our feelings. We have emotional reactions, we “act out” or “lash out” and we sometimes have emotional responses to a trigger in our environment.

In this episode of Learn With Less, Ayelet explores some of the ways we can help our youngest humans to develop healthy social and emotional development, and some of the tools we can provide.

Below is the transcript of this episode’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.

For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.

Even in the first year of life, babies are incredibly sensitive to emotion. Research suggests that even by a few months of age, infants are able to recognize the difference between happy and sad expressions, and differentially process emotional tones in voices they hear.  

That’s powerful stuff! Recent findings even suggest that infants exposed to more conflict show higher stress levels (measured by their brain activity to angry tones of voice) – and regular exposure to conflict (including exposure to those angry tones while they are asleep!) can deeply affect the way their brains process emotion and anxiety, leading to their own ability to regulate emotions.

You may have seen your baby start to cry simply when he hears another baby cry! This imitation and “empathy cry” is not simply for the sake of imitating others, but because infants look to others for cues about emotional signals, and are affected by other peoples’ emotions.

This is why it’s important to try to pay attention to your emotional reactions to things, and give words for how you (or others around you) are feeling. It’s also why, when speaking to your baby, it’s wise to try to match your tone with your intent.

Your baby is learning from you about how to display and regulate his emotional reactions to things, to the clearer you can be about yours – the better!

When you label emotions – of people in your environment (especially when strong emotions are witnessed), or those your baby expresses, you give words to feelings and reassure her that feelings of all kinds are valued.

If you explain how actions make people feel, or make predictions about why people might feel a certain way – when looking at pictures of other people or watching others in a social situation – you work on sensitizing your little one from a very early age to an important part of social language, cognition, and perspective taking, something in the psychology field that is known as “theory of mind.”

We’ll talk more about this in future episodes, but for now, I’ll just say that if you can naturally build in this type of “emotional language” naturally and fluidly throughout your baby’s early months and years, you will be supporting her receptive language (what she understands) as well as her social/emotional and cognitive development.

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

The post Helping Infants & Toddlers Understand Feelings appeared first on Learn With Less.

There comes a time in every baby’s life when he realizes he is a separate entity from his caregiver. Mayhem ensues.

Below is a transcript of this episode’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.

For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.

Talking about things you see, as well as relating experiences about things you have seen is also, in a way, related to object permanence in that a young child must have a mental representation of the object about which you’re speaking.

This, of course, also correlates with the beginning of “symbolic” thought, and there is therefore a good deal of overlap with language (which is the verbal or gestural symbolic representation of objects, people, ideas, etc.).

More specifically, though, having an understanding of “object permanence” signifies that a young child knows that an object or person still exists, even if it’s hidden. So, for instance, your baby watches you place a stuffed animal under a blanket or behind a box… and then knows that it’s there when you ask her, “where’s the bear?”

This is why games and activities that increase your baby’s awareness of and familiarity with the fact that objects out of sight still exist are wonderful ways to help support your baby’s understanding of object permanence.

Many of the activities we’ve done in previous episodes inherently help support the development of object permanence – and many of the play items we’ve made and used can be wonderful props.

I’m thinking specifically about Episode 5, “Visual Supports” and the “Tissue Box of Mystery,” Episode 8, “Building & Supporting Relationships” and the “DIY Photo Mailbox,” Episode 9, “Communication, the 1st 6 months” and the “Corks in the Box Shaker,” and Episode 11, “Assuming Intentionality” and the “Scarf Song Prop.”

This episode’s corresponding DIY object, the “Familiar Family Book,” gets to the heart of helping your baby understand that you haven’t left “for good,” and helps to make sure there are nice reminders of you and other familiar people in his environment when you are not present.

In my opinion, “peek-a-boo” is the ultimate game for developing and appreciating object permanence, with the added benefit of the main attraction being your baby’s favorite thing to look at – your face!

Simple games and social routines like these are great helpers for developing an appreciation for and familiarity with the fact that we are here even when hidden.

This is not to say that playing peek-a-boo will simply generalize into easing separation anxiety each time you leave your baby, but it helps give her the tools to understand the concept as a whole.

It’s important to remember, too, that your little one’s “experiments with gravity” are also part of this cognitive growth – when she drops a spoon or piece of food to the ground from her high chair, and then looks over the edge for it, giggling demonically… this is her testing the hypothesis that object permanence applies to all things in all situations.

She’s essentially playing peek-a-boo with her food. Yes, it’s frustrating, and yes, it’s messy. But it’s also what learning looks like.

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

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