Ask A Speech Pathologist

14/10/2022

Friday October 14 is - Developmental Language Disorder Awareness Day.
This year's theme is . DLD is most often associated with children but children with DLD grow up to be adults with DLD. DLD is not a condition you grow out of; it's a condition you learn to live with - some learn to live with it better than others.
✨ Wear purple on
to show your support for those living with
Developmental Language Disorders 💜

International

11/10/2022

'Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a hidden but common disability that affects 1 in 14 people causing difficulties understanding and using language for no known reason.'
'People do not grow out of DLD but with individualised support that can include regular speech-language therapy and educational adjustments they can thrive. It’s about growing with DLD.'

Friday October 14 is international DLD Awareness Day.

Learn more about at https://radld.org/dld-awareness-day/

09/10/2022

Excellent post by guru, Pamela Snow, rebutting the myths and misconceptions that are still plaguing instruction in schools, including the one 'leveled at speech-language pathologists (SLPs), who are told to “stay in their lane” by some who are misguided or ill-informed about the scope of practice of the speech-language pathology profession.'

It’s been a busy few weeks with respect to discussion and debate about literacy in the public domain. I have been interviewed a number of times by print and electronic media and inevitably only segments and sound-bites of my comments are used, so there’s not much nuance in the discussion.

06/06/2022

It's not every day that you have a 12-year-old student disclose to you in a session that they have a gun license and go open-range shooting with their family. Not in suburban Melbourne, Australia where we have some of the tightest firearm regulations in the world.
I'm sharing this story now in the wake of the massacre in - it's part of the discussion we all need to have.

GiaB prompt #2–20: fi****ms

25/04/2022

As some of you know, I've been dabbling in some creative writing of late - including quite a lot of . My speech pathology background has really helped.
More particularly, the students I've assisted over the years have been a source of inspiration for some of my pieces - like this one which was recently published in Medium.
It's a story poem about a girl who discovers that dance helps with her difficulties.
For those of you interested in reading it, I'd be thrilled to know what you think. ☺️

Here's a friend link to the post so you have free access to it.
https://bit.ly/3k8O52p

One day she will spell pirouette

21/04/2022

I've been reading up on Aphantasia - the partial or complete inability to voluntarily visualize something in your mind i.e. a malfunctioning 'mind's eye'. For example, if I were to ask you to imagine yourself standing in the bathroom looking at yourself in the mirror, a person with couldn't do it. They'd have some vague notion of the bathroom and the concept of looking in a mirror, but they wouldn't have a clear image of the scene in their mind. At best, it would be hazy and fragmented; at worst, it would be totally blank.

I was particularly interested in finding out what the literature has to say about the connection between , , and . Reading and spelling, after all, are highly visual processes and reliant on visual memory.

My search pretty much drew a blank - which didn't really surprise me given that aphantasia is not recognized as a formal diagnosis, is relatively unknown in the literacy research sector and would be difficult to quantify and replicate in clinical trials.

Nevertheless, it's still worth talking about, especially as teaching strategies in the junior years are heavily weighted toward the visual modality and speech pathologists use visualizing-verbalizing techniques in language therapy. It doesn't take a big leap to realize that a child with aphantasia is unlikely to respond well to these teaching and intervention methods.

Interested in your thoughts on the topic - especially interested in hearing from anyone who has aphantasia with or without dyslexia/dysgraphia.

In this YouTube video, Aileen Donnelly explains what it's like for her to have aphantasia.

04/04/2022

Excited to read about the Kindship app in today's The Australian.
Created by speech pathologist, Summer Petrosius, from NSW, Australia, Kindship is a social media tool for parents of children with special needs to connect and support each other through shared experience, advocacy and mentorship.
I'd love to hear from anyone who is using the app. The reviews I've read so far are very encouraging.
Learn more about it here - https://www.kindship.com.au/

09/09/2021

September 9 is International FASD Awareness Day.

Unlike autism and ADHD, many people have never heard of FASD - Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. This is despite FASD being estimated to be more prevalent than either autism or ADHD.

Here's a blog post I published earlier today that provides information about FASD including the case study of a girl I supported who was diagnosed with the condition.

5 Ways to Increase Awareness of FASD

23/08/2021

September 9th is International Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Awareness Day.

Here's an excellent opportunity for you - or someone you know - to learn more about FASD - a free online seminar, Understanding Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, presented by a panel of Victoria's leaders in the field of FASD assessment and management.

Thursday September 9 2021 - 1:00 - 3:00pm AEST

Register online.

A free online seminar for the health and community sector

22/06/2021

Excellent editorial by Alan Tudge, Australia's Federal Education and Youth Minister, writing in The Australian today, in support of -
:: evidence-based teaching practice
:: systematic phonics instruction
:: explicit teaching
and,
:: pre-service teachers being trained by experienced teachers as opposed to academics in education faculties that 'have been infected with dogma and teaching fads'.
I could have highlighted most of the article but settled on pulling out the section that speaks to the students speech pathologists work with -
'It is shameful because the people who are most affected by poor teaching practices, particularly in regards to reading, are disadvantaged kids who don't have the parents at home to fill in the gaps, or children who have reading difficulties such as dyslexia.'
Let's hope Alan Tudge MP can keep the momentum of change moving in the right direction. Our kids have waited too long already.

02/05/2021

It's been a while since I posted anything on this page.
I've been busy with a number of projects including blogging on Medium. I'm sharing one of my blog posts here.
It was published last week just prior to the release of ACARA's draft version of the revised Australian curriculum. Little did I know that my post would be poignantly relevant to the public debate about the teaching of humanities and Western Civilisation that has since erupted.
In the article, I write, '...it saddens and frustrates me enormously that some choose to use their brain’s capacity to process text and data to effectively deny others the opportunity to be literate in a world that demands it. Literacy is not a privilege; it is a right.'

The main part of the article is a prose poem that traces the history of literacy to our present-day stand-off between proponents of evidence-based Science of Reading and ideology-based whole language. Prose poetry is one of the creative forms of writing I've been dappling in lately.

Our plight in a world that demands literacy