Do you keep a baby book of ‘firsts’?

In the early months of parenting – marked by sleep deprivation, chapped hands from nappy changing and mountains of laundry – it’s hard to keep track of all your baby’s ‘firsts’: the first smile, the first roll, the first kiss, the first food she mashes into her mouth, the first time he plays in the sand on the beach. Each first is more amazing than the last!

As speech pathologists, our first questions to parents are often about your child’s ‘communication firsts’: when did babbling first start? When was the first word? How many words does your baby have at the end of his/her first year, and at 18 months?

These are hugely important questions for us, as they are powerful indicators of how your child is developing. For many parents, though, these ‘firsts’ often get lost amongst the others.

So let’s talk about the developmental milestones we’re looking for.

First 3 months

In these early months, your baby’s best form of communication is crying! Whimpers, snuffling, snorting, howling – they all mean different things. At this age, babies are also actively listening and absorbing the sounds and patterns of intonation within words and conversations.

4-6 months

Babies starts to play with sounds by moving their lips and touching their tongues to the front or back of their mouths. And they start to babble by combining strings of sounds such as ‘baba’ and ‘kakaka’. These sounds don’t have meaning yet, but your baby loves it when you respond.

You can support their development by mirroring the babbling back at them and talking to them. Being enthusiastic about their babbling helps them understand that it is meaningful, and it encourages even more exploration of babbling.

7-12 months

At this age, strings of sounds go into hyper-drive! Patterns and intonations, along with gestures, make it sound like real conversation even if you can’t understand the words. At around 12 months we are looking for their first word. The trick here is to be super excited when they ‘talk’ and to help them shape their words. Seize opportunities. For example, if they say ‘ga’ or ‘ta’ or ‘ba’ and there is a toy car or a picture of a car nearby, you can enthusiastically say, ‘That’s right, that’s a car! That car is red!’

Even if they weren’t meaning ‘car’ at all, you are making them feel like they actually said it while also modelling how it is said. Basically, you are turning their non-words into real words which they can listen to and copy.

12-18 months

Now those strings of syllables really start shaping into meaningful words. It doesn’t matter if the words aren’t said accurately. If they are being used with meaning, we count them as words.

Your child will have some really cute ways of saying things, but it is important that you model correct speech by saying the word the right way. Instead, you can create great memories by just writing down the way they say ‘butterby’ for butterfly or ‘ongee’ for orange!

The Magic 8

I talk to families about The Magic 8. When you are teaching a new word to your child, say it eight times in different short phrases. Don’t bury it in long sentences. Here is an example of how you could do this. When playing with a truck, say:

‘Truck.’ ‘That’s a truck.’ ‘That’s a red truck.’ ‘This truck is big.’ ‘The truck goes vroom.’ ‘The truck is carrying stones.’ ‘The truck is climbing over a hill.’ ‘Oopsy daisy, the truck fell over!’

In just that short burst we have taught some ‘describing’ words (red, big), action words (carrying, climbing), some functions about trucks (carries stones) and a bit of social language (oopsy daisy). That’s intensive language-therapy gold in eight short phrases.

Read books. Lots and lots of books.

Book reading offers such a rich opportunity to build vocabulary. Follow your child’s interests. Rather than start from page one, you can randomly flip from page to page, talking about the pictures he or she shows interest in.

At this age, babies don’t need to learn about the structure of a story. They just want to interact with you. Talk about what they’re pointing to and have conversations with them. The ways in which to maximise book reading is a whole fabulous topic of its own!

Oh, and don’t forget to keep track of their communication ‘firsts’. Your Blue Book or even just a list on the fridge is a great start.

At The SPEECH Centre Forestville we love getting out into the community and providing opportunity for busy families to access the best possible care for their children! By providing speech and language screening in childcare and preschool settings, we cut the hassle out of early intervention.

We organise for a team of our qualified Speech Pathologists to visit a childcare centre or preschool. Firstly, we provide training to the Educators on expected milestones for speech and language development, and teach them how to identify and monitor a child with communication concerns and work with parents to support the child. We know that investing in the Educators means we are investing in the children too.

The Speech and Language Screeners are then provided in the ease of the childcare or preschool through fun interactive games. Our Speech Pathologists look at children's speech sounds, vocabulary, language understanding and language use, social skills, voice and fluency. The screener looks at a how a child is meeting expected milestones and helps guide their parents and the pre-school towards the appropriate assistance where needed.

We then provide direct follow up with parents in the form of a written report and a complimentary phone consultation. We are thrilled to already be partnering with ManlyVale Early Learning Service, Forestville Early Learning Centre and Headstart Early Learning Centre Roseville.

If you are a parent with a child in Pre-School or Childcare, a Centre Director or staff member and can see the benefits of a Speech Pathology Screener in your child's centre, let us know! We also provide on site training for staff in language and literacy and have oodles of fun and interactive ideas for making speech and literacy fun!

We're excited to announce that our Sight word group is returning in Term 3.

These groups are suitable for any Kindy or Year 1 kids who are struggling with learning sight words, or who have reading fluency difficulties. These kids are typically the ones who either struggle to decode, or can decode but have memory difficulties so their decoding skills do not help them with learning sight words.

We use visualisation and multiple recall techniques that we learned from MacQuarie University to help practice. We will also provide parent training so you can use the techniques to be more effective teaching sight words at home.

Call us to book: 02 8068 0571

Cost $200/Term.

We are excited to have The Speech Centre featured in todays edition of the Manly Daily. The article explores how the Centre's Clinical Director and Founder, Mimi Naylor, utilised business mentoring and education in business management through TAFE to build her own success story. To read the article in full check it out here. The Speech Centre is open from 8am to 6pm weekdays and 8am until 2:30pm Saturdays to service your speech and language needs. Contact us to book an assessment today or visit our FREE Drop-In clinic between 8am and 10:30am Tuesdays at The Speech Centre, 14 Starkey Street, Forestvile.

In recognition of the International Communication Project 2014, speech pathologist Mimi Naylor celebrates the achievements of her client Christine and husband Tom. Christine loves dancing and tells of a recent ballet rehearsal she went to: “gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. Slim men”. She gestures, “six-pack”. Her husband Tom rolls his eyes in response. The patter of conversation never ceases as they compete for the listeners’ attention, the dialogue flowing with scaffolded questions, conversational repair strategies, sound cues, animated gestures, and expressive facial expressions.

What you’re really watching is the result of years of intensive speech pathology intervention. Christine had her first stroke at 53, followed by a second stroke 18 months later, the latter greatly affecting her communication skills. I’ve worked with Christine for nearly two years as her speech pathologist. She is nearly always buoyant, with a bright personality whose slightly naughty sense of humour makes her utterly charming.

She appeared as a guest as I lectured to second year speech students. She pointed to all 88 of them – “gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Beautiful girls. All of you. Thank you.” She was thanking them for studying speech pathology, for the difference it had made to her life. The students were at once charmed but stunned to think that their chosen profession would deserve such gratitude or could have this impact on someone’s life. Tom tells that six years ago Christine was a different person. “Now she’s quite capable of having a conversation, being expressive and enjoying a good bit of social life. When she was first exposed to speech pathology, she just mimicked. Now she can generate and form words, sentences and answers, as her reasoning has also improved.”

He looks to Christine to check he’s not doing too much talking for her. “Before it was a pretty dark hole situation, wasn’t it babe, and you’re still recovering. That’s the important thing. You’re still showing different improvements in different areas, which is a reflection of what you’ve been exposed to with your speech therapy.” Christine nods vehemently in agreement. One year ago, we decided Christine had allowed Tom to be her voice for long enough. Christine’s eyes darted to him in panic if she needed to communicate in public.

Speech pathology supported her to practice useful key words and short phrases with various visual prompts. We role-played answering phone calls and ordering coffees. Using the practiced scaffolds, Christine approached a Big W staff member and through a combination of single words and gestures, asked directions to the kitchen aisle. Christine was jubilant. She exited the store with tea towels and hair clips. She had made an independent purchase for the first time in over four years! Tom would jokingly sigh that she was going to “bleed him dry” as Christine started to gain the confidence to approach staff for assistance in the post office, the bakery and the pharmacy, with interactions invariably leading to purchases.

Pink. White. Biscuits. You’re thinking Iced VoVos, aren’t you? Wrong. How would you find out what Christine was trying to tell you? Tom tried drawing some shapes and asking questions to no avail. He took Christine to Coles and together inspected the biscuit aisle with no luck. Christine then took matters into her own hands and approached an assistant. “Pink. White. Biscuits”, she said. “Not Coles, IGA”, the assistant replied, “you won’t find them here”. Christine’s ability and confidence to communicate effectively is testimony to the impact of collaborative working in speech pathology. Christine is an active participant in her life choices and has gained a sense of freedom towards that. Her conversations with Tom are two-way and meaningful, and through communication partner training, Tom has gained the skills to prompt, interpret, and seek alternative means to ‘converse’ with Christine. Yes, they did get their Honey Jumbles biscuits. Sweet success.

Mimi Naylor -Speech Pathologist & Clinical Educator, The University of Sydney

Please note this article has been edited to meet space requirements. Mimi, Christine and Tom submitted a full version of this story as part of the National Senate Inquiry in to the prevalence of different types of speech, language and communication disorders and speech pathology services in Australia. A full version can be seen on the Senate Inquiry website.