The Beehive, Speech Language Literacy

05/01/2026

May is Better Speech and Hearing month. It's time to do a little information sharing. Let's start with language.
When a young child shows behaviour challenges or anxiety at school, it’s easy to assume they are being oppositional, inattentive, or “acting out.” But sometimes, the real struggle is hidden beneath the surface: language.
So many children with language challenges are misunderstood and their language challenges are missed.

Children with language difficulties may have trouble understanding directions, processing information quickly, expressing their thoughts, finding the right words, or keeping up with fast-paced conversations. When communication feels confusing or overwhelming, behaviour can become the child’s way of coping.

What may look like:• Avoidance• Shutdowns• Frustration or meltdowns• Withdrawal• “Not listening”• Acting silly or disruptive• Anxiety in group settings......may actually be a child trying to manage a world that feels hard to understand.

Language challenges are often invisible. A child may speak in full sentences and appear conversational, while still struggling to process language, follow complex instructions, understand social cues, or explain what they need.

Before we label behaviour, we should ask:

“What is this child trying to communicate?”“Could understanding or expressing language be part of the challenge?”“Is anxiety showing up because school feels harder than it looks?”

When we understand the connection between language, behaviour, and anxiety, we move from judgment to support — and that can change a child’s entire school experience.

04/18/2026

Have you considered intensive speech sound intervention over the summer ?

04/18/2026

Openings on the horizon. Immediate availability for assessments on Thursdays, these would be during the day.

04/05/2026

Happy hoppy Easter

04/01/2026

You walk into a room with a plan…

and 3 seconds later you’re standing there like, “???”

Gone. Completely gone.

We laugh it off as “one of those things,”
but that’s executive function.

Holding onto a goal long enough to act on it.
Keeping track of what you’re doing while you’re doing it.

And if that feels hard for adults with fully developed brains…

imagine being a child who’s still building that system.

So when a student starts a task and then stalls out, forgets, or drifts..

it’s not necessarily that they weren’t listening.

The plan just didn’t stick.

Not a behavior problem.

A brain-in-progress, executive function need.

03/13/2026

Self-direction (aka executive function) cannot be instructed.

It has to be experienced and practiced.

A child learns how to be self-directed by practicing being the director of their own life.

Not by adults constantly telling them what to do.

But this is where many environments unintentionally work against development.

Children are often given:
• behavioral directives
• constant reminders
• immediate correction
• adult-led problem solving

And while this may keep things running smoothly in the moment, it quietly removes the very practice children need.

Self-direction develops through experiences like:

• deciding where to start
• realizing something isn’t working
• adjusting the plan
• managing mistakes
• finishing something without being prompted

These moments build the internal systems behind executive function:
planning, self-monitoring, attention control, and regulation.

When adults do the directing, children learn to wait for direction.

When children are given space to direct, they learn to think, plan, and act for themselves.

Self-direction grows when children are allowed to practice being the director...

even if it’s messy sometimes.

Because executive function is not something we can tell children to have.

It is something they build through experience.

03/13/2026

Happy March break travels to my families.

03/11/2026

When you finally get that R sound you do the happy yahoo dance.

03/11/2026

Sometimes what looks like an attention need isn’t attention at all.

It’s perception.

Before a child can focus on the important information, their brain has to filter the sounds, movement, and activity around them.

Understanding the difference between perception and attention changes how we support kids.

03/07/2026

Happy weekend everyone. Don't forget to SPRING forward. Yay spring here we go.

03/02/2026

03/01/2026

There is no one size fits all reading program.
First we need to see where things are breaking down. We need to look at attention and working memory.
We need to look at language.
Knowing where things break down helps to develop a more individualized reading program to support a child's profile.
Some children may be fine with a scripted , out of the box program, others will need a very different approach.