CSC Blog
Executive Function and Time Management Skills
Mastering Executive Function and Organization Skills
A new program offered this summer for Middle School and High School Students at Child Success Center
Is your son or daughter preparing to enter middle or high school in the fall and struggling to stay organized? Does he forget to turn in assignments? Does she feel lost when it comes to planning out long-range assignments? If this sounds like your child, he might have challenges with “executive function and time management skills”. Child Success Center offers an opportunity for you and your child this summer to help improve these skills.
Child Success Center uses an effective and proven program based upon the Sklar Process™ that helps your child learn and understand time management and executive functioning skills that are critical for success in all aspects of life. The curriculum teaches both you and your child how to use a variety of visual tools tailored to those with challenges in executive functioning and time management. An Educational Therapist who is trained in this life-changing curriculum will lead 10-12 sessions designed to foster a lifetime of effective behavioral changes for improved time management and organizational skills. This course is the beginning of an ongoing conversation between parent and child about how to effectively and more easily manage school and life.
The program will help the student and parent:
- Increase awareness about procrastination and explore ways to minimize its effect
- Learn how to organize large projects into an action plan within a functional time frame
- Explore the use of visual aids to coordinate a weekly schedule
- Dive into the brain to begin to understand how we process and organize information when managing tasks and keeping to a time schedule
- Improve self-awareness and metacognition in an effort to utilize strengths to support areas of challenge
- Learn about and create tools to manage time, tasks and organizational skills
- Improve communication with others for better time and task management at home and at school
Our Summer Program is now enrolling. Make this the summer for change. Learn more about the Child Success Center’s “Organizational and Executive Function Groups” on our website or contact Maria Fagan Hassani, M.A., ET/P at Child Success Center – 310-899-9597.
Kindergarten Readiness – A Checklist for Parents
Kindergarten Readiness means possessing the skills that will make the transition from pre-school and the school year a success.
How do I know if my child is ready for Kindergarten? What should my child know before entering kindergarten?
If you are asking yourself these questions it probably means that you either have a child whose birthday is in the spring and/or has had some challenges at preschool. Perhaps you feel your child needs more support, protection, adult guidance and is struggling to follow directions, attend, sit still, communicate, hold a pencil, and make friends . The preschool years provide opportunity for a child to grow and develop social communication skills, pre- academic skills, emotional regulation, motor skills and transition from whole body learning to the ability to sit and listen and learn. Often parents are not sure if over the 6 months from spring to fall their child will grow out of their challenges or grow into the skills that they feel are needed for the transition to kindergarten. So if you are one of these parents here are some questions to ask yourself and some information to gather to help in both making a decision and helping your child “Get set for Kindergarten”.
These are some of the questions I ask parents when helping then decide between a developmental kindergarten year or kindergarten.
1. First we review medical history? Think back to your pregnancy and your child’s birth and infant history: where there any issues such as IVF, bed rest, long labor, prematurity, time in the NICU, difficulty breast feeding, colic, poor sleeping patterns, reflux. Our children are hard wired in utero and understanding your child’s neurological full picture from birth is often helpful in understanding your child at age 5.
2. Motor Milestones- Did your baby crawl? When, for how long and what did the crawling look like ( on all 4’s versus commando crawling)? Were there any delays with walking, running, jumping, climbing and do they seem at ease with moving their bodies through space? Is your child a movement seeker, avoider or neither? These questions help you understand the child’s sensory motor wiring and if sitting in a chair for a lot of the school day will be a challenge. For a child to be ready to learn with their eyes and ears and brain their body needs to be ready to sit upright and stay calm for long periods of time.
3. The next set of questions relate to cognitive and emotional development. Babies arrive with fundamental neurologically based social capacities, which are shaped, encouraged and developed through experiential learning and the brains physical development. Did your child have a very challenging time separating from you in the first year of preschool? Do they have good awareness of other’s thoughts and feelings and are they able to talk about them? Do they infer emotions from other children’s facial expressions and can they share in group imaginative play? Do they have a lot of anxiety when going to birthday parties and new places?
4. Language Acquisition: At what age did your child babble and use words, sentences and complex social language to share ideas and problem solve with a peer? Your child’s language prior to kindergarten should be fully functionally. This means they should be using language to ask and answer questions, use appropriate grammar, connect and organize their thoughts, talk about their own personal events and share stories in an organized manner.
5. Handwriting: Does your child have a hand dominance and when did this start? Does he hold the pencil with an adult tripod grasp and is he comfortable drawing shapes and making simple pictures?
6. Letters and numbers: Do they recognize the majority of the upper case letters and has this been a very slow or easy learning process? Are they interested in print material and realize that letters make up words and tell stories?
7. The final question: Is there a family history of challenges with academic or social learning, attention or memory?
All children benefit from learning in an environment that is emotionally safe and provides them the “just right learning challenge”, a challenge that is only slightly above their current capacity and one that is attainable. For many children the transition from preschool to kindergarten offers challenges that are not “the just right” challenge. So how do we help these children? Getting accurate information is key before making decisions. The professionals that are skilled to assess the roots of learning are occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and learning specialists. It is important to take into consideration the whole child including the social emotional systems prior to making this decision. Once an assessment has been made then filling your child’s learning “tool belt” so they feel confident when entering kindergarten becomes the primary objective. Kindergarten readiness camps and individual sessions tailored to the child’s needs are great ways to ensure Kindergarten success.
Ways to gather insight and information.
1- Kindergarten readiness assessments
2- Speech therapy and or occupational therapy assessments
3- Get set for Kindergarten camp
To prepare kids for their new challenges, Child Success Center will be holding Kindergarten Readiness Camp in the summer of 2014, which will offer a play based learning environment designed to help children acquire skills in problem solving, flexible thinking, group collaboration and pre-reading and writing through the use of Zoo Phonics, Handwriting Without Tears and Social Thinking. Our exciting indoor gym will be turned into a fun learning camp with swings, a trampoline, climbing wall and monkey bars to take campers on an adventure while building up their kindergarten skills.
Presented as either individual weekly “Camps,” or a 2 week session, kids will spend over 20 hours a week involved in activities designed to help them develop the skills needed to excel in kindergarten. The program will help children develop confidence when taking the first steps toward making new friends, attending to a new routine, handwriting and reading.
Program Highlights:
For the young children who lack interest or capacity for writing, letters and numbers can seem daunting. To make this learning fun we love Zoo Phonics. Phonics is the learning of letters and words through sound and it’s taught using a cast of zoo animals. Letters come alive as the children learn to recognize and match them with sounds, then write them with ease. Multisensory activates such as drawing and writing on the walls with shaving cream make this fun and a joyful experience.
Goals will be dependent on the needs of the group of children signed up for the week.; each child will have the ability to participate in activities that will focus on their needs as well as the needs of the other children in the group.
Areas covered include but are not limited to:
1. Social thinking: social skills required to play with others and learn in a group- listening with your whole body, perspective taking, sharing thoughts and ideas, social problem solving,
2. Identifying Upper case letters and match them with a name and sound using using the Zoo Phonics program
3. Learn how to correctly form upper case letters (and lower case letters if they show an interest) using the Handwriting without Tears program
4. Fine motor skills: Master holding a pencil, marker or crayon and handwriting skills
5. Develop attention and listening skills for success in a Kindergarten classroom
6. Promote body awareness through creative play and movement
Begin their love for learning
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Handwriting – Dying Art or Important Skill?
Is handwriting a dying art or is it still an important skill to master?
“My child’s handwriting is illegible. Do I need to do anything about this? Why do many children struggle with handwriting legibility? Does my child really need to learn handwriting?”
There has been some discussion recently about the viability and necessity of learning penmanship skills. Yet research shows that writing by hand engages the brain and is a vital component of literacy. Since handwritten testing throughout the school system is unlikely to change any time soon, learning to write quickly and clearly is an important means to an end. With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, the emphasis and expectations placed on classroom note-taking and expository writing in grades K–5 is greater than ever.
Whether a child prints or uses cursive writing, it must be legible to convey correct test answers, thoughts, instructions, etc. throughout his academic career and life. Therefore “hand writing” is a skill that must be learned and serves many purposes besides legibility.
While we may take the ability to write correctly for granted, many support skills must first be learned requiring the hand, eyes and brain to work in harmony. This becomes more challenging when a child is experiencing a delay in certain areas of development. This in turn can leave a child with feelings of frustration, decreased confidence and success, and often results in avoidance of the very repetition necessary to build skill.
The years between the ages of 3 and 5 are the time your child will build the motor coordination required to develop the dexterity, hand strength and endurance to shift from a fisted grasp to an adult 3 finger, (tri-pod) dynamic grasp that will allow them to control the pencil with ease.
In order to successfully engage in the Kindergarten curriculum, the foundations for a successful pencil grasp and control need to be in place. Core strength for body control to sit up right and arm strength to hold the paper still and stabilize the writing arm need to be well developed before the art of learning handwriting can occur. Their eyes need to work together to hold a focal point and track and be ready to shift gaze across the paper and from the board to the paper and back with ease. The visual memory system needs to be strong to retrieve the images of letters and begin to make sense of what they are seeing by adding meaning through the matching of sounds with each symbol. Reading and handwriting are a partnership – when one grows the other gets supported.
So why do some children struggle with handwriting and how do we help them?
When this very complicated neurological process has a hard time coming together, a child can be left with feelings of frustration and decreased confidence. Fundamental skills are often learned in the form of play for children and not work. They are driven to continue activities by feeling good and having fun. When the activities in the preschool years such as cutting, drawing, beading, climbing and catching a ball are not easy for them they often have the choice to avoid them, thus not engaging in the repetition actually needed to master the skill.
Teachers and parents may not notice that the child is avoiding these types of play especially if the child is exceptionally verbal and engaging. As adults, we need to be aware that children need to have healthy exposure to activities that will develop their nervous systems during the pre-school years in preparation for activities such as handwriting.
How do I know if my child will get past his difficulties?
Development is an individual process as each child has their own unique brain and their own sets of natural gifts and challenges. When engaging in general activities, parents and teachers can help children by:
- Making the child feel emotionally safe and excited to engage in the activities they may want to avoid.
- Grade the activity down to a level the child can easily engage in.
- Keep the activity as child driven as possible.
- If you are struggling to work with your child consult an Occupational Therapist. OT’s are highly trained in assessing the foundational neurological processes that are the base for all play and learning. They are able to let teachers and parents know if the struggle is rooted in lack of exposure, a mild delay that will catch up on its own, or truly an inefficient processing system that needs guidance and the right support to spring board into a positive outcome.
- If in doubt, ask.
Simple things you can do to help your child with his handwriting skills:
- Make sure your child is seated in a chair and at a table that allows for an upright posture with their feet firmly on the floor. Keep the ankles, knees and hips bent at approximately 90 degrees.
- Encourage the non-dominant hand to support the paper.
- Take a small cotton ball and place it under the 4th and 5th digits and secure it into the palm to help build the separation of the 2 sides of the hand to increase pencil grasp.
- Play bouncing, throwing at a target and catching games.
- Draw letters on each other’s back and try to guess the letters.
If left un-monitored, children may begin to:
- Have a negative relationship with learning
- Write a few words instead of the many ideas and thoughts they would like to share
- Have decreased confidence and self-image related to written work.
- Spend valuable brain energy on the handwriting process instead of the thoughts and ideas and learning process
Handwriting should be fun and requires the whole brain and the whole body.
The “Handwriting Club” at Child Success Center is a program customized to meet each child’s needs. Program is designed and run by licensed and highly skilled Occupational Therapists and features multi-sensory strategies, whole brain learning, and the extremely successful Handwriting Without Tears® program.
For more details or to enroll, call Child Success Center at 310/899-9597 or e-mail: enroll@childsuccesscenter.com
Related articles:
Teachers Still See Need for Cursive Writing
Handwriting Club at Child Success Center
Child Success Center Announces “Handwriting Club” for 2014
There has been some discussion recently about the viability and necessity of learning penmanship skills. Yet research shows that writing by hand engages the brain and is a vital component of literacy. Since handwritten testing throughout the school system is unlikely to change any time soon, learning to write quickly and clearly is an important means to an end. With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, the emphasis and expectations placed on classroom note-taking and expository writing in grades K–5 is greater than ever.
Whether a child prints or uses cursive writing, it must be legible to convey correct test answers, thoughts, instructions, etc. throughout his academic career and life. Therefore “hand writing” is a skill that must be learned and serves many purposes besides legibility.
While we may take the ability to write correctly for granted, many support skills must first be learned requiring the hand, eyes and brain to work in harmony. This becomes more challenging when a child is experiencing a delay in certain areas of development. This in turn can leave a child with feelings of frustration, decreased confidence and success, and often results in avoidance of the very repetition necessary to build skill.
The years between the ages of 3 and 5 are the time your child will build the motor coordination required to develop the dexterity, hand strength and endurance to shift from a fisted grasp to an adult 3 finger, (tri-pod) dynamic grasp that will allow them to control the pencil with ease.
The “Handwriting Club” at Child Success Center is a program customized to meet each child’s needs. The program is designed and run by licensed and highly skilled Occupational Therapists and features multi-sensory strategies, whole brain learning, and the extremely successful Handwriting Without Tears® program.
For more information or to enroll, call the Child Success Center – 310.899.9597 or email: Enroll@childsuccesscenter.com
Read complete article: “Handwriting – A Dying Art or Important Skill?”– by Melissa Idelson, Director, Child Success Center
Get Set for Kindergarten Program
Preparing your child for kindergarten.
One of the greatest challenges in the young life of most children is making that initial big step into Kindergarten. Many parents who have had their little ones in preschool believe that Kindergarten is somewhat akin to preschool and that significant academics really don’t kick in until 1st or 2nd grade, but that is far from reality. With the introduction of the new Common Core Standards, the bar is being raised and children entering Kindergarten must be more prepared than ever. In recent years, California Kindergarten curriculum has shifted to become far more academically skewed than in past decades and now more than ever, it’s very important to have all children properly prepared for these greater new challenges. To successfully excel in their new setting, children must achieve and master certain educational and social skills to adequately adapt and grow in a more accountable and often faster paced setting.
Some things to look for in the “Kindergarten-ready” child:
- Follows words left to right and top to bottom
- Understands that words are separated by spaces in print
- Recognizes and can name all upper and lower case letters of alphabet
- Demonstrates basic knowledge of letter sound correspondence by producing primary sound made by most consonants
- Holds a pencil with an adult grasp – 3 fingers with control of the pencil from the fingers
New Program to Help Kids “Be Prepared” for Kindergarten with Proper Skills
To help those who may need additional support, Child Success Center announces it’s new “Get Set For Kindergarten” program, a fun, interactive opportunity to prepare your child for Kindergarten. The program will help children develop confidence while taking the first steps toward handwriting and reading. The huge gymnasium at Child Success Center turns “learning” into “play” and all activities will inspire creative interests and offer hands-on fun through touching, exploring and games.
Small groups are now forming – call to reserve your child’s spot and help ensure the best start possible to a positive and successful academic experience.
Is Your Child "ready" for Kindergarten?
You have a child in kindergarten and it’s time for the first round of parent teacher conferences.
Do you feel excited to hear about how your child is doing at school or are you a bit nervous? Are you ready to guide your child’s learning experiences this year along with their teachers?
This year I am both a parent of a kindergartner and the Director of a development and learning center. For myself and all the other parents, September was a long month filled with first days of school, back to school nights, challenges with what to pack for lunch so your child will eat, early mornings and building of new friendships. It is also the time that many schools schedule parent teacher meetings to begin the process of sharing and gathering information about your child.
I recently had my conference and I will tell you that if we had sent our son to kindergarten last year it would have been a very different conversation. My son is a May birthday and a year ago, even with a play based, multi-sensory approach to learning that he had been exposed to at Child Success Center in the “Get set for Kindergarten” program and through his school, he was just entering the very beginning stages of interest, desire and ability to understand the 2 dimensional written world of letters, words and print. At 5.4 years of age last September he was a sweet, sensitive child whose brain was not ready for kindergarten in some ways and very ready in others. He, at that time, was struggling to write his name and draw. His peers were already doing that and showing interest in letters. My son was building the San Pedro harbor out of blocks and the Eifel Tower out of Magna Tiles. Some would say that is fine. While there is nothing wrong with that he wasn’t gravitating towards play based activities that would help him build foundational learning processes for reading and writing. Such activities encompass a large part of a child’s school day and include rhyming, identifying differences in the sounds that letters make, matching a sound and symbol, identifying the name of letters and beginning to write them, drawing and controlling the pencil. At that time, my son wasn’t quite ready.
Over the past year we chose to enroll him in a developmental Kindergarten program at Circle of Children and he participated in a weekly kindergarten readiness class followed by a Kindergarten readiness camp over the summer at Child Success Center. He loved all of his experiences as they were presented in a play based approach and provided him with just the right challenge to learning.
So back to the teacher conference… I was able to walk away feeling happy and calm that my son is now ready to learn, excited to learn, has the foundation to learn and the capacity to learn. Most of all, he sees learning as fun. He sees himself as a reader and loves to handwrite. As an Occupational therapist and his mother I am very proud of his beautiful dynamic pencil grasp!!
Moving from a 3D world of playing with Magna tiles to the 2D world of reading and writing is not easy for many children.
We know that the Center for Disease Control states that 16.7% of children have a diagnosed learning and/or developmental challenge and we also know that many children struggle with undiagnosed challenges. Many behaviors such as being impulsive, aggressive, controlling, avoidant, shy, silly, disinterested, immature or having a short attention span, are really a child struggling with the processing capacity to do the activity that is being asked of them. They may be having a hard time taking in the information from their environment, making sense of it quickly and efficiently and producing the desired or required successful response. Many children excel in their natural ability to remember what they see or hear and many struggle with attention, memory, visual and or auditory processing and sensory motor processing. It is time to look at behavior through a different lens and promote early detection and support for our children.
All human beings have a brain that processes some information easily and other information not so easily. Is your child a visual leaner or an auditory learner? Does he seem to learn better if he is moving? The human brain processes uniquely and we need to strive to understand our children’s natural capacities to learn. Some children will require extra support along the way. This is where individualized and specific help from trained learning specialists such as occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and educational therapists can prove to be beneficial. We as parents need to read the signs and be open to exposing our children to the teaching methodologies that will support their inherent desire to learn, setting them up for a positive relationship with learning.
Is your child ready for Kindergarten? Is he/she exhibiting behaviors that are troubling and disruptive? Early intervention begins with a proper assessment. For more information on the assessment, therapeutic and Kindergarten Readiness programs offered by Child Success Center, please click here.
Some things to look for in the “Kindergarten-ready” child:
- Follows words left to right and top to bottom
- Understands that words are separated by spaces in print
- Recognizes and can name all upper and lower case letters of alphabet
- Demonstrates basic knowledge of letter sound correspondence by producing primary sound made by most consonants
- Holds a pencil with an adult grasp – 3 fingers with control of the pencil from the fingers
Back-to-School – Working with Teachers to Identify Speech and Language Problems
Kids are Going Back to School – Working with your child’s teacher to identify speech and language problems early on is critical to ensuring his/her success at school.
As children return to the school classroom and play yard this year much will be expected of them in the areas of oral communication and listening skills. While the summer time offered great opportunity for children to build the sensory motor skills needed for playing and learning, they also had a break from the often complicated auditory and language world that school presents them.
If you have had concerns about the rate of your child’s speech acquisitions, their attention, socialization, ability to follow direction, answer questions, verbally problem solve, express themselves and emotionally handle communicating with their environment and those in it, we suggest you talk to your teachers at the beginning of the school year to make them aware of your concerns and to discuss ways to help your child be successful. As parents we know more about our children’s strengths and challenges than anyone else. Give your teacher a head start by meeting with them either before school starts or within the first 4 weeks. Often when children struggle with sensory motor and or speech and language processing their behaviors can be misinterpreted as personality traits; Controlling, sensitive, shy, aggressive, avoidant, rigid. Truth be told, these behaviors, if not properly identified, can hamper a child’s academic success as early as pre-school. We are setting students up for success if we identify and support as early as possible.
Knowing who to turn to for information is key. Seek guidance from your school, pediatrician, friends and online. You will find answers. Sometimes it is very clear what your child’s speech and language needs are… “my child cannot say the “s “sound.” Other times it is not so clear… “My 3 year old is hitting at school, not using words to communicate easily and is always on the go.” The combination of Sensory Integration trained Occupational Therapists and Speech and Language Therapists working together is often critical when searching for the underlying root of the challenges your child is presenting with. A collaborative therapy center offers you, the parent, with guidance and a whole child approach as your child grows.
Not all communication challenges are rooted in a speech and language disorder. But it is imperative that this be ruled in or out through a thorough assessment process. If you child is under the age of 5 it should be a play based assessment and your child should be made to feel as relaxed and comfortable as possible in a new environment. Make sure that the environment has play space and is not a small office. If your child is older make sure the therapist is skilled in identifying language based learning challenges and works closely with an educational therapist as these services often work side by side.
For more information on speech and language development and age related indicators that your child may need help please refer to this chart .
Speech and Language issues by the numbers:
Speech or language problems can lead to reading and writing difficulties which in turn lead to serious educational consequences.
- Some 17-20% of children in the United States have difficulties learning to read.
- More than 70% of teachers believe that students who receive speech and language services demonstrate improved pre-reading, reading, or reading comprehension skills.
- Most poor readers have an early history of spoken language deficits.
- A recent study reported that 2nd graders who read poorly had phonemic awareness or spoken language problems in kindergarten.
- About 41% of fourth grade boys and 35% of fourth grade girls read below grade level.
- Overall, communication disorders affect approximately 42 million Americans. Of these, 28 million have a hearing loss and 14 million have a speech or language disorder.
***Statistics provided by ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association http://www.asha.org/)
New Occupational Therapist Joins Child Success Center Team
The Occupational Therapy Team at Child Success Center is pleased to welcome Gina Yoo as it’s newest member.
Gina Yoo, MS OTR/L, comes to us with 12 years of experience in the field of Pediatric Occupational Therapy. She has worked with individuals ranging from 0-21 years old with a variety of diagnoses, ranging from developmental delay to Autism to Down Syndrome. She is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a Master of Science in Occupational Therapy. In addition, she is certified in auditory programs such as Therapeutic Listening and Integrative Listening Systems (iLs).
She has also worked with other disciplines throughout her career such as speech and language pathology, physical therapy, developmental optometry and psychology to enhance the therapeutic experience not only for the child but the family as well.
Gina’s main goal is to provide a safe, supportive and therapeutic environment to promote each child’s optimal performance, build self-esteem and teach skills to enhance their quality of life and academic success. In addition, since the family is an integral part of the therapeutic team, Gina feels it is essential to involve them in the process and selection of activities for carry over in the home and community.
We welcome Gina to Child Success Center and look forward to introducing her to our families!
For more information on the Child Success Center’s Occupational Therapy Programs click here.
Changes in California Education May Offer Reasons to Consider Summer Academic Camps
California’s new Common Core Standards go into effect with 2013-2014 School Year.
You may be busy gearing up for summer, but one thing is certain: It’s not too early to start thinking about the fall season – especially if your child will be starting Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd or 3rd grade. The Kindergarten and early grade experience is in the midst of significant changes. For that matter, every grade level is going through dramatic changes, but we’ll focus on our younger scholars for this discussion.
Kindergarten – A New Kind of “Kid Stuff”
One of the greatest opportunities, and also challenges, of a child’s young life is the transition from a preschool into an elementary school environment. For children who are about to enter a new world of academia, this summer will mark the end of an era and the beginning of their “real” relationship with education and learning. Many aspects of Kindergarten will be entirely new for them. The school will be bigger, there will be more time sitting at a table, more focus on letters and numbers, more time handwriting, more time listening, and definitely, a great deal more structure. The days will be longer and there will likely be more independence required as part of the overall classroom routine.
Many think of Kindergarten simply as snacks, naps and playtime but, actually, it’s significantly more challenging than it used to be. In an effort to help students prepare for a more competitive job market upon graduation, California is joining 44 other states in a transition to a more rigorous academic curriculum called Common Core State Standards, which dramatically affects all levels of education, starting with Kindergarten.
California lawmakers put the wheels in motion with approval of the new scholastic standards in 2010 – and by 2015, all elementary school curriculum is expected to be well on the way to completing the transition. What this means to your Kindergartner is that she or he will be learning aspects of language, math and reading skills at levels formerly slated for higher grades. Knowledge of these changes has clearly started to reach parents, with many feeling encouraged to ensure their child attends a preschool, transitional Kindergarten or other appropriate alternative, which will better prepare them for the challenges ahead.
If your child is heading off to Kindergarten this fall, or if your grade-schooler has struggled in any way during the current school year, here are a few tips regarding summer camps that can help your young one to be prepared for school in the fall.
- First and foremost, the summer months are and should be a time for play, exploration, creativity and fun. However, blend these carefree experiences with camp or summer class experiences that will benefit your child through the years of grade school ahead.
- Think twice about what kind of organized summer activities you select for your child. Every year parents shell out hundreds and hundreds of dollars shuffling kids from one summer camp to another – ranging from soccer camp to cooking and anything imaginable in between. If you are currently pondering the best summer camp investment to benefit your child’s growth and development, remember that there are long term advantages in ensuring their early scholastic years establish a strong foundation on which to build a lifetime of learning.
- For children entering Kindergarten there are one or two week summer Kindergarten readiness camps featuring effective and award winning learning programs such as Handwriting Without Tears and Zoo phonics. These tools are fun, engaging and very effective in helping kids learn.
- For kids who will be entering first, second or third grade who are having even slight challenges with math, reading or handwriting, similarly, there are summer learning “fun” classes that can tune-up and improve an area needing help using fun and entertaining techniques. Additionally, some summer academic programs include activities involving a full multi-sensory kid friendly gymnasium. Studies show that kids learning retention improves greatly when the curriculum is enhanced with physical activities that exercise motor skill abilities.
- Grade school preparation camps can directly improve a child’s comprehension and retention skill-set, which in turn will work wonders to build their confidence and bolster self-esteem upon entering a new grade.
- Parents of kids who attended a “play-based” curriculum preschool, or whose child struggled at all with routine preschool activities, may want to consider a professional evaluation for their child to ensure that he or she is ready for kindergarten by the fall.
- Parents should also remember that the stronger academic demands placed on kids can create new stresses they have to deal with, which can influence behavior, self-confidence and their social skills. If you are already faced with challenges in these areas, don’t be afraid to seek out extra help for your little one to obtain techniques and/or therapy to help overcome the issues before the new school year compounds any problems.
Ultimately, enjoy and get the most out of summer this year. But, along with your family vacation of a lifetime, the epic barbecue cookouts and neighborhood block parties, remember to keep an eye on the new school year and make sure your kids start the journey off in full academic stride.
To learn more about the Kindergarten Readiness Camp at Child Success Center, click here.
For more information on The Summer Academy at Child Success Center, click here.
May is National Speech Month
Child Success Center sheds some light on speech and articulation issues in children.
Communication is a fundamental skill that lays the foundation for how each of us will flourish and interact in society. Its importance cannot be understated, which is why we pay special recognition to National Speech Month. We are happy to present a special interview with noted speech pathologists Gina Costello, M.S., C.C.C., and Micaela Sulham, M.S., C.C.C.-SLP, who will help to shine a light on some common challenges that can affect a significant percentage of children during their key developmental years – and if left untreated, they can have severe physical and psychological implications. Speech challenges in children can exhibit overt symptoms such as delayed language development, but they also can lead to behavioral, self-esteem and de-motivational issues.
Some speech challenges can be “grown out of”, however others, left untreated, can lead to more severe problems down the road. To better understand Speech Articulation and the therapy process, Child Success Center’s licensed speech pathologists Gina Costello, M.S., C.C.C. and Micaela Sulham, M.S., CCC-SLP , share keen insight about the challenges, successes and the general information that parents want regarding the help their child needs. Here are their responses to several essential questions surrounding these issues.
What are the greatest challenges you deal with as a therapist?
Micaela – My most challenging client is the client who understands how difficult it is for him/her to talk. Those clients tend to use “compensatory behaviors” to avoid speaking which become secondary behaviors. Some of the strategies include tantrums, avoidance, distractions, etc. The secondary behaviors tend to mask the real problem. As a therapist, we have to work on the problem while dealing with the secondary behaviors. This task is very difficult especially with children who have been using the compensatory behaviors for quite some time.
Gina – In all honesty, there are two clients-the parent and the child. I find parents that are in denial of their child’s problem to be the most challenging. The parent can become very defensive in this situation. I have complete understanding and compassion about how difficult it must be to accept that their child needs help. However, I have actually seen parents not get help for their child due to their own fears or ego. This really makes me sad for the child.
As a therapist, you are always challenged with coming up with new and creative ways to do therapy. Some children are very receptive to therapy and are very compliant. Other children demonstrate avoidance behaviors, may lack internal motivation or challenge the therapist behaviorally. It takes a special therapist to have patience, understanding, compassion and creativity to pull out the best in each child. This is the beauty of experience.
What has been your greatest success story?
Gina – I worked with a child years ago who was 2 years of age and had apraxia of speech – with only 10 words at the time. Most 2 year olds have 200-300 words. His father was a very involved parent, but needed a lot of guidance in understanding how to communicate with his son. He often drilled him with questions putting him on the spot, causing him to “shut down” when he talked to him. The father was very educated and successful in his career, however, I could sense that he did not feel success with being a parent due to this child’s communication deficit. After 6 months of treatment, both the child and the father, who also attended the weekly sessions made huge gains. The father learned how to be a better communication partner with his son and the experience significantly changed the dynamics between them. With therapy a success, I formally assessed the little boy and his communication skills were above his peers. On the last day of the therapy his father cried and was so grateful. That was beyond rewarding for me!!
Micaela – Hearing a 3 year old child with a diagnosis of apraxia of speech say his nanny’s name for the first time without any help. This child was known to simplify the words in his vocabulary to very similar and short words (mama, dada, nana, pa, ba, etc.). In (therapy), he was trying to share a story about his former nanny after Skyping with her the previous evening, and independently said his nanny’s full name. His mother began to tear up. It was that feel good moment that you want as a therapist with every client you treat.
So parents can better understand the process, for the most common cases, what changes, aside from what you are treating, do you observe in clients you help?
Gina – I definitely see more confidence and less frustration with most of my kids. Some children are teased by their peers because of their communication problems. I find that kids can become more confident in interacting with their peers too.
One of the most amazing and beautiful things that speech therapy does, is it helps children learn to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. In therapy, you have to help kids learn new skills and sometimes they don’t want to do the work. It gives them the confidence to work through their discomfort and know that they will eventually be successful with practice.
I also think that it is a confidence booster for parents too. Some of my parents are shocked by what I can get out of their kids. They can’t believe that their child is willing to do the work and be pushed at times. I think it gives a parent a sense of pride in their child.
Micaela – As children progress through therapy, they show more confidence in their skills. I have seen children start to stand taller, walk taller, and use a louder, more appropriate voice when unfamiliar faces are near. However, these are also the children who teach us as therapists to “think on our toes”, or else they may use their new found skill to escape their work task.
What are the most common questions parents will ask?
Gina – Parents typically want to know how long the therapy process will take? They also want to know what reason they should tell their child for going to speech therapy? They ask what therapy is like and how will I get their child to do the work? They always ask if the problem will go away on its own – without therapy? They often ask if they have done something to create this problem (parents often blame themselves).
Micaela – How long will this process take my child? Many parents are balancing a busy life with work and family. They always ask how long the process will take. This always is a difficult question to answer as the time varies from child to child. It may take 3 months, but it may take over a year. It depends on why the child is coming to therapy, what are the speech errors, how many errors, what type of errors, etc. There are a lot of factors to consider which makes that question one of the most difficult questions to answer.
What are the most common questions kids will ask, if any?
Gina – Kids often want to understand why they are coming to speech therapy (especially the older ones). As they continue to come and they are in the final stages of therapy, they want to know when they will be graduating and what we do for graduation parties. They often ask about the kind of toys and games we play?
Micaela – Kids ask some silly questions, the saying “Kids say the darnedest things” truly applies in my line of work. However, some of our older kids who have been in therapy for a while or have seen other children finish and leave therapy may start to ask when will they “graduate”?
Child Success Center is unique from other therapy facilities because it features a fully equipped and kid friendly gymnasium that the kids love to explore. How do you use the gym to help clients and why is it effective?
Gina – The gym is a great tool to motivate kids. We sometimes use the gym as a reward in the middle or end of our sessions. It’s also great for children who are not regulated and need movement to help them feel more regulated in their bodies. Children that have high arousal levels and children that are under aroused benefit from speech work in the gym to help them stay internally organized and regulated. This helps them to attend more to the speech work and also helps motivate them. Physical movement helps jump start the communication centers in the brain.
Micaela – The gym is often used as a special reward for students. We see many children ranging in age from 2 years old to 12 years old. These children always enjoy knowing that they have gym time after working hard in speech. For other children, the gym is used to help the child during the speech session. These children typically benefit from the repetition of drilling for specific sounds, requesting by using language, etc., by utilizing the gym equipment. For these children, sitting in a chair at a desk is not the ideal situation because their body may need vestibular and proprioceptive input. When working with these children, the occupational therapists are amazing at providing tips to help improve a speech session. These tips may include providing the child with heavy work (e.g. climbing, moving pillows around) to help regulate a child or swinging in a specific manner (e.g. linear movement, spinning, etc.) and even jumping.
Child Success Center is offering an impactful and fun program to help your children improve speech and articulation skills through a special series of summer articulation classes. The process starts with a brief assessment of your child’s speech needs, age and schedule availability so that a summer program can be created to support you and your child. Click here for more info or call our office to set up an appointment.
Additional reading: Incidence and Prevalence of Communication Disorders and Hearing Loss in Children
