What if you DON’T do the big heroic thing for your child’s communication development?

It is traditional at the beginning of the year to either set a big audacious goal, or to shrug and say you won’t be bothering (has anyone noticed that the world seems to have got together and decided to have a ‘word of the year’ instead of resolutions, when did that happen?  Was there a meeting?).

It can feel like either we need to make heroic life-changing efforts to affect change, or we should just accept things as they are, with nothing much in between.

No-one seems to know exactly who said it, but it is a truism that

‘most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in ten years’. 

This is as true in working with your child with communication needs as in any other life area.

Some people respond to their child’s communication needs by buying into programmes that take hours every day to deliver.  This is fine, but I am a bit suspicious of approaches that promise huge results, but only work if you deliver them for 5 hours a day.  It has been my experience that these are unsustainable in terms of time and the impacts on family life.  When you are unable to maintain the efforts involved, then it can be easy to feel bad about this and feel like you have let your child down.  But this was not your fault, that programme was unfeasible by any reasonable measure!

More commonly, families get as much done as they can, as often as they can, quietly beating themselves up about not spending more time devoted to their child’s communication.

The fact is that small amounts of regular effort add up.  They might not add up in the big showy heroic ways that we might wish for, but they add up in the way that matters:  your child’s progress.  I often have the conversation that a child has made loads of progress, but a family can’t see it because it has happened so gradually.

The tiny things you do every day to support your child add up to real progress.  They even add up to progress when it looks like nothing is changing in your child.  I know that weeks and months can go by where you see no change, but every day you have spent even a little time prioritising a communication strategy or activity for your child, you have strengthened the foundations of their future progress.

So I hope 2020 is the year you do tiny things, as often as possible! (If I had to make this into a word of the year, I guess it would be ‘incremental’).  I happen to think turning up and trying your best is pretty heroic too.

Angharad

For pragmatic but effective ways to help your child with their communication, I’d love to see you in my Facebook group,‘Find the Key for Families’.  Practical information and advice from an experienced Speech and Language Therapist, and the support of other families who know what you are going through.

 

 

 

Things We Love #5 Life with Greyson + Parker

One of the fantastic things about the internet is being able to find people in your ‘tribe’.  As a Speech and Language Therapist, I enjoy being able to hear from Parents who are going through similar things to the families I work with.

It is reassuring too, when you can see families implementing ideas like the ones we suggest in therapy all the time, and seeing them working, and celebrating their successes with them.

Chrissy is Mum to Greyson and Parker, two boys on the autism spectrum.  She talks about, and posts videos of, a lot of their Speech Therapy sessions.  She also is a powerful advocate for their use of their AAC (alternative and augmentative communication) devices, and shares videos of the family modelling.

Chrissy also posts about family life and lots of other things.  Following this page is a life-affirming experience.

If you’ve got a page, website, book, blog or resource you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.  They might make it into a future blog post, too!

Things your Speech Therapist wants you to know #2 It’s OK to cry in sessions (AKA We are aware you have emotions)

Working in the areas of Complex Needs and Feeding has been an emotional education for me.  Until you work with people who are needing to recalibrate their lives in the face of overwhelming circumstance, whilst learning how to apply the advice of several different degree-level specialists, some of whom disagree with each other, you don’t have a clue, really.

I consider it part of a Therapist’s skill set to sit with you through these times in your life.  Not a skill set we are altogether prepared for in our training, it seems to me, but then perhaps no-one can prepare you.

Please know that I do not expect you to use any shred of your precious emotional and physical energy to suppress your feelings during our sessions.  Crying is OK.  Feeling overwhelmed is OK.  Feeling angry is OK.  It’s all OK.

Sometimes I find in feeding therapy that we don’t seem to be able to make progress towards our goals.  I sometimes find later that my advice has pushed on an emotional button that a Parent wasn’t ready for me to press, and so they haven’t been able to implement what I’ve suggested.   That’s Ok!

The feeding therapy relationship can be an intense one.  It’s important to give yourself the emotional space to adjust to the new challenges that you and your family face.

My therapy appointments have that space in them, if you want it.

Posts from ‘Find the Key Speech Therapy’ are intended for information.  They are not intended to, and cannot, take the place of advice from an appropriately qualified Speech and Language Therapist who knows  your child.  ‘Find the Key Speech Therapy’ does not take responsibility for the use of any advice without appropriate professional guidance,

 

Things Your Speech Therapist Wants You To Know #1 This is What Progress Looks Like

So many of the lessons I have learned working in the area of complex needs, communication and feeding therapy, are life lessons really.

What a privilege and an education, that a family lets you learn these lessons with them and from them, and then in time, that you get to model these lessons to someone else’s family.

Making progress with your child’s communication and feeding can be hard.  Your child starts to lick a new food, and then they get a cold, and they stop. You were just getting going with that communication board, and then your child was admitted to hospital for a month, and now you don’t even remember where you put that communication board.

The human brain is really good at experiencing events, and then making a story out of them that links them all together.  We all love a good story.  So the human brain has a habit of viewing progress as a neat linear process.

It can be tempting to conclude that you are doing something wrong when your child’s progress doesn’t look like this.  But in reality, all progress is made of tiny steps forward, the odd step backward and the occasional topple from the path altogether.  Nobody’s progress has ever looked like a nice straight line, ever.

Don’t get caught up too much in the story your brain is telling you about the progress being made, or you will be trapped in an exhausting cycle of elation and crisis as you interpret whatever your child did today as the whole story.  This is especially true when you are tired and stressed.

Keep your eye on the big picture- what is your goal?   Understand the steps you need to take to get there, and just do them, as consistently as you can manage.  Don’t beat yourself up about the day you didn’t get the therapy work done, just quietly refocus on the goal and start your baby steps again.

On a day-to-day basis, it can feel like you’re not getting anywhere, but when you look back, you will see how much progress you can make this way.

Like all things that are true, this probably sounds irritatingly trite and positive-thinky. But I hope it comforts you that you are not in charge of the big picture, just the little bit of time right in front of you.  As a Therapist, I know that time and consistency will take care of the rest.

Image by Iain Welch Art and Design

Posts from Find the Key Speech Therapy are intended for information.  They are not intended to, and cannot take the place of advice from an appropriately qualified Speech and Language therapist who knows your child.  Find the Key Speech Therapy does not take responsibility for the use of any advice without appropriate professional guidance.