Tag: speech langauge pathologist
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A Speak for Yourself Scrapbook: Everything Begins With an Idea
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” ~Mahatma Gandhi Everything that is created starts with an idea. A thought enters the mind and sometimes that thought passes like a vehicle on the…
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Simon Says: Model One More Word
One of the more common, and important, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) implementation strategies is Aided Language Input or modeling. It would be overwhelming to use your child’s/client’s device to model EVERY word you are saying verbally…for you and the child! Here’s the good news, you can successfully use Aided Language Input without overwhelming anyone! This blog topic was prompted by a discussion in the Speak…
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The AAC Detective: Try Observing These Five Behaviors for Clues
“I want you to know that today, in the brief moments when I was quiet, I was just enjoying being with you.” I want to say that more in 2014. The beginning of this post is more personal than most, but it’s a new year and a good time to reflect. I feel like my…
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The History Feature in the Speak for Yourself AAC app
“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton I don’t usually write a blog post when we release a Speak for Yourself update, but this 1.5 version update is special. Over the years, as we’ve worked with…
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AAC Implementation: Where Do I Start?
You have a nonverbal child who is depending on you to find him/her a way to communicate. Whether you are a parent or a speech-language pathologist (SLP), that’s a lot of pressure, and the stakes are high. You take the responsibility seriously. You have an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) app or device. If you’ve…
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Stimming on Autism
Sometimes….I “stim.” It’s true. It is interesting and comfortable inside of my own mind, and sometimes I curl up there and block out the rest of the world. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) is definitely one of my obsessions. I think about it all the time. Sometimes, when people talk, I listen to their rate…
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Speech-Language Pathologists and Augmentative and Alternative Communication Evaluations: First Do No Harm
We have been writing this post for years in our heads. Every time we are asked to consult for a child who has already had an evaluation with a recommendation for an extremely limited mid tech device, we write it. Every time we go into a classroom for one child, and ask the speech- language pathologist…
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An AAC Analogy: More Than Just Pushing Buttons
There have been online and “in person” conversations recently about the expectation of children using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) to form sentences in a relatively short amount of time. We give “typical” verbal children at least two years before we expect them to combine two words, but AAC devices are frequently abandoned before a…
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Our Roles as Moms and Speech-Language Pathologists Collide at the Autism Walk
The Southern New Jersey Autism Speaks Walk Now for Autism was this weekend. It’s a great opportunity to see the children we work with outside of the classroom…in the fresh air, surrounded by bubbles and bouncy castles. We were involved and attended the walk before the creation of Speak for Yourself, and actually before the…