Seppi is Sleeping: Book Review and Giveaway

A little while ago Sandy Coleman contacted me via email to tell me about this little book she had written and how she felt that it would be a useful tool for therapy.  As literacy is a matter very dear to my heart I met up with Sandy to discuss her book.  She introduced me to Seppi, the hungry skunk, who goes on a hunt for some food.

Sandy is a passionate volunteer for Shine.  This organisation is an NGO  founded in order to improve the literacy skills of children in Grade 2 and 3.

For more information on this organization click here.

Sandy has been working in schools for 3 years and has a background in teaching and training. Through her exposure to children with articulation difficulties (including her own grandson) she was inspired to create a character to encourage carry-over of speech skills as well as to encourage early readers. Keli Hazelton (Creative Manager at San Diego University) did a beautiful job in illustrating the book.  Her pictures are colourful and emotive and bring Seppi to life.

This book is a lovely addition to any therapy bag. It is suitable for children between the ages of2 and 8 years and  can be used to target a variety of aims. I’ve attached a therapy guide for the book to this blog post for some inspiration. Here are just a few things this book can be used for:

1.      Imitation of environmental sounds:  For the babies who are learning speech it is a good tool to elicit some imitation of funny sounds. Children often learn these kinds of sounds before they even begin to use words. Imitating is an important skill for learning speech sounds. When Seppi is looking for food he sniffs along the ground; make the noise with the child, when he finds the strawberries use an exclamation like “WOW”, when he is eating the strawberries make the eating noise ‘nomnomnom’ and when he finally goes to sleep you can say “shhhh..” and make a snoring noise.

2.      Articulation: This book is full of words that begin with /s/ and this is great practice for our lispers. Therapy to correct a lisp is often a frustrating process, but with the guidance of a speech therapist you can use tasks (like this book) to work on carrying over the correct sound production into everyday situations. For information on lisping see the following links:
      1. What is a lisp at Playing with Words 365
      2. Correcting a Frontal Lisp at Heather's Speech Therapy
      3. My child has a lisp. Should I be concerned? at MommySpeechTherapy  

3.       Vocabulary: This book is a great tool to expand a young reader’s vocabulary. It talks about directionality (north, south, east and west), animals and emotions to name a few topics. Have a look at my therapyguide to the book for some more ideas. 

      I'd like to thank Sandy and Keli for their help and for allowing me to use their creations. 

If you would like to stand the chance to win a copy of the book, all you have to do is leave a comment! I will contact you via email to confirm a postal address. If you would like to order a book or have any great ideas for future projects please feel free to leave those ideas here .

About Strokes

Do you know someone who’s had a stroke? Have you ever wondered how or perhaps why a stroke happens? Below I’ll discuss the basics to shed light on this condition!

What is a stroke?

A stroke is when there’s an interruption of blood flow to the brain caused by a blocked or burst artery. When the flow of blood is interrupted, the brain is deprived of essential oxygen. This causes the affected brain cells to die, resulting in the impairment or loss of function to the body parts they control.

What difficulties occur after a stroke?

•     Physical impairment
•          Difficulties with communication i.e. understanding or talking
•          Difficulties with eating and/or swallowing
•          Emotional problems
•          Cognitive impairment

What intervention is needed after a stroke?

Depending on the severity of the stroke, the patient may require intervention from various health professionals. This multidisciplinary team will work together to assess the patient and provide a treatment plan.

•          Doctor to diagnose the patient and provide the necessary medication.
•          Speech Therapist to manage speech, language or swallowing difficulties experienced by the patient.
•          Dietician to ensure that the patient has adequate nutritional intake.
•          Psychologist to help manage emotional problems experienced by the patient and family.
•          Physiotherapist to assist with mobilization and restoring physical functioning and skills like walking.
•          Occupational Therapist to assist with relearning the skills needed for activities of daily living such as eating, toileting and dressing.

If you or anyone you know has experienced a stroke feel free to contact our stroke support group. You can also find more information on the following websites:

1. About.com

2. Heart and stroke foundation

3. Different types of strokes

Post submitted by Maaliyah Orrie

Apraxia of Speech or a Phonological Disorder?

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder that is not due to muscle weakness. The brain has difficulty planning the movements that need to be executed by the mouth structures to result in speech. This results in difficulty with making voluntary speech sounds and sequencing or stringing them together in the correct order to make words. The child knows what he/she wants to say, but his/her brain has problems with coordinating the muscle movements necessary to produce those words.

Characteristics of CAS include:

Early Development

·         slow and late development of speech skills

·         limited early sound development; most vocal communication is in vowels only

·         limited ability to imitate speech

·         frustration with communication skills

·         use of grunting and pointing as a main mode of communication beyond 18 months of age

·         words used a few times and then never heard again

     Speech Characteristics

·         unintelligible speech

·         difficulty positioning the mouth structures for speech sound production (“groping”)

·         inconsistency of speech productions

·         difficulty speaking “on demand”

·         unusual and atypical error patterns

Phonological Disorders:

A phonological disorder is difficulty with the patterns for combining sounds clearly into speech. Find a description of phonological processes here.

Important Differences

1.    Language Skills

Although their receptive language or understanding is generally intact, children with apraxia usually have delayed expressive language skills. Children with phonological disorders may have expressive language skills closer to or within the normal range. While their speech is mostly unintelligible, they use lots of words and try to combine them into phrases and sentences.

2.    Copying Abilities

Children with apraxia usually have severe difficulties imitating speech sounds or mouth movements, while children with phonological disorders can copy movements, sounds or words, although their words might not be produced accurately.

3.    Consistency of Errors

Children with phonological disorders are generally consistent with their errors and exhibit patterns of errors, while children with apraxia are very inconsistent. They could say a word correctly once and then incorrectly a short while after.

4.    Vowel Sounds

Both children with phonological disorders and apraxia have difficulties with consonant sounds, but children with apraxia also substitute or sometimes omit vowel sounds too.

5.    Groping

Children with apraxia often look like they are searching for the correct way to position their mouths to form speech sounds.

It is important to contact a speech- and language therapist if you are at all concerned about your child’s speech development and –intelligibility.

For more information check out the following links:

The Source for Childhood Apraxia of Speech (LinguiSystems)

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/childhoodapraxia.htm

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Childhood_apraxia_of_speech

http://www.pammarshalla.com/blog/2011/08/differentiating-between-apraxia-and-severe-phonological-deficit/

http://teachmetotalk.com/2008/03/16/is-it-apraxia-or-a-phonological-processing-disorder-sorting-out-the-differences-in-toddlers-preschoolers-2/

http://testyyettrying.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-is-childhood-apraxia-of-speech-and.html

http://www.webmd.com/brain/apraxia-symptoms-causes-tests-treatments

Post by Elmien Truter

Stroke Support

Every month at Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic we host a Stroke Support Group.
This week we had a discussion around the topic of lifestyle and the impact of stroke.

We watched videos from the Stroke and Heart Foundation of Canada and held some discussion around this.  You can find the videos here.

One of the main points that stood out during our group was that after a stroke your life changes and won't be the same again. For a person who has very recently experienced this it may sound extremely daunting; however it was pointed out that this new life path can be a positive one. Many people have made changes to their lifestyle that improved their quality of life as well as their general health. These changes that need to be looked at include:

• Diet
• Reducing stress
• Safe exercise
• Having a support system

I have attached the power point presentation used in our group as a resource. This can be used for similar groups but is particularly for our members to download and keep.

You can get the presentation here

What are Phonological Processes?

What are Phonological Processes?

Phonological processes are the patterns of sound errors that typically developing young children use to simplify adult speech as they are learning to talk. All children use these processes while their speech and language are developing.

Young children do not yet have the ability to coordinate all the mouth structures such as the lips and tongue for clear speech, so they simplify complex words in predictable ways until they develop the coordination needed for clear articulation.

As children get older, their speech matures and they stop using these patterns to simplify words, which results in more understandable, adult-like speech. As every child is unique, each child will develop their phonology skills differently, but there are ages when it is expected that a child should stop using different phonological processes.

Below is a table describing the different phonological processes and the age by which they should likely disappear:

Substitution Processes

Phonological Process	Description	Examples	Gone by Approximately
Fronting	A sound produced in the back of the mouth, e.g. /k/ or /sh/, is replaced by a sound produced in the front of the mouth, e.g. /t/ or /s/.	car → tar sheep → seep	3:6 yrs
Backing	A sound produced in the front of the mouth, e.g. /t/ or /d/, is replaced by a sound produced in the back of the mouth, e.g. /k/ or /g/.	tap → cap duck → guck	Usually seen in more severe phonological delays.
Stopping	A fricative sound (e.g. /f/, /s/ or /sh/) or affricate sound (e.g. /ch/ or /j/) is replaced by a plosive/stop sound (e.g. /p/, /t/, /d/).	fish → pish sun → tun shoe → too thin → tin	3 yrs = /f/, /s/ 3:6 yrs = /v/, /z/ 4:6 yrs = ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘j’ 5 yrs = ‘th’
Deaffrication	An affricate (e.g. ‘ch’ or ‘j’), is replaced with a fricative or stop sound (e.g. ‘sh’ or ‘d’).	chips →  ships jump → dump	4 years
Gliding	Liquid sounds (/l/, /r/) are replaced by glide sounds (/y/, /w/).	leg → yeg ring → wing	5 yrs

Syllable Structure Processes

Phonological Process	Description	Examples	Gone by Approximately
Final consonant deletion	The final consonant in a word is deleted.	soap → sew dog → dah	3:3 yrs
Weak syllable deletion	The unstressed syllable in a word is deleted.	telephone →tephone banana → nana	4 yrs
Cluster reduction	A consonant cluster (two consonants next to one another) is reduced to a single consonant.	spoon → poon truck → tuck	4 yrs

Assimilation Processes

Phonological Process	Description	Examples	Gone by Approximately
Pre-vocalic voicing	An voiceless sound at the beginning of a word, e.g. /p/ or /k/, is replaced by a voiced sound, e.g. /b/ or /g/.	pig → big key → gey	3 yrs
Word final devoicing	A final voiced sound, e.g. /d/ or /g/, is replaced by a voiceless sound, e.g. /t/ or /k/.	bed → bet bag → bak	3 yrs
Consonant harmony	A sound starts to sound like another sound in the word.	bus → bub cat → tat	3:9 yrs

Click here to download the PDF version of this table.

A phonological delay is when a child continues to use these processes beyond the age when most typically developing children have stopped using them.

It is important to consider contacting a speech- and language therapist for an evaluation if you are concerned regarding your child’s speech intelligibility and/or suspect a phonological delay.

Information for this post was gathered from these sources:

1. http://mommyspeechtherapy.com/?p=2158
2. http://www.playingwithwords365.com/2011/09/phonological-processes-and-phonological-delay/
3. http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30:table2&catid=11:admin&Itemid=117
4. http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=31:table3&catid=11:admin&Itemid=117

Post Submitted by Elmien Truter