Is Your Child Ready for Back-to-School?

As we get ready to send the children back-to-school, Tot-a-Doodle-Do! co-producer and Speech & Language Pathologist, Penny Cohen has some thoughts on helping children with pragmatic/social language challenges:

Questions;

• Does your child have difficulty joining in on and actively participating in discussions?
• Is child unable to sustain a topic during discussions?
• Does child have difficulty communicating with his/her peers?
• Does child use inappropriate turn-taking in conversation?
• Does child avoid eye contact when communicating with others?
• Does child omit greetings and farewells?
• Does child appear to enjoy playing alone rather than with his/her peers?
• Is child unable to work cooperatively in a group?
• Does child make the same mistakes repeatedly rather than learning from his/her mistakes?

What to Do:

• Do not assume the child understands how his/her actions affect others - EXPLAIN!
• Explain cause and effect relationships as situations arise and within stories and books.
• Have child retell stories and describe pictures -what is happening, "why" it might have happened, how the characters feel and what might happen next.
• Stay away from "yes/no" questions unless you want short answers.
• Set up structured games where there is turntaking and cooperative learning situations
• Start a "roses/thorns" tradition for discussion time every day. The "rose" being the best thing that happened and the "thorn" being the worst thing that happened that day.
  
• Set up play dates and encourage the child to participate with others. Give them phrases to use when at the playground or around other children, such as "Hi, I'm ________, can I play with you?", or "Do you want to play with me?", "What's your name?
• Contact a Speech Pathologist for an evaluation.