Let me start off with a brief story.\u00a0 I have two cats at my house.\u00a0 One recent weekend, I kept hearing these strange scraping noises from the steps.\u00a0 I got up and looked briefly- one cat was pushing his water dish around and blocking the steps.\u00a0 Now that I had the noise figured out, I went back to my book.\u00a0 Well, five minutes later, I hear the noise again!\u00a0\u00a0 This pattern continued for about an hour, at which point the second cat became involved.\u00a0 He decided the best way to gain my attention was to jump on the kitchen counter!\u00a0 First he went for a glass of water, then he went for the faucet.\u00a0 So I get up and scold him.\u00a0 Then I start wondering, “What are these behaviors trying to convey?”\u00a0\u00a0 So I began reflecting about what had happened.\u00a0 First the water dish was moved repeatedly, then going for water glasses, then faucets… the common factor?\u00a0 You guessed it- the cats wanted their water dish filled!<\/p>\n
Now, you may ask, how does this relate to speech and language therapy?\u00a0 Well, it is so important to identify the function of a behavior so that we can best help that child.\u00a0 For instance, consider the child who enters a room with his mother, then begins playing with a toy.\u00a0 His mother slips away while he’s distracted.\u00a0 Right after you give the child a crayon, he begins crying, throwing toys, and hitting the wall with his hands.\u00a0 What is the behavior telling us?\u00a0 Well, probably not that he hates crayons, but most likely that the child did not realize his mother left, and he is uncomfortable in this new environment.<\/p>\n
Now the bigger question: how can we help this child use a new behavior?\u00a0 In certain situations, a child may just need to increase his familiarity with the new situation.\u00a0 One way we can do this is by having his mother stay in the room, then gradually leave while saying good-bye.\u00a0 We can also use simple schedules\u00a0 to help the child predict what is going to happen and what comes next.\u00a0 This creates a routine for the child, which again often helps increase familiarity.\u00a0 For other children, the behavior may not be as simple, at which point speech and language therapy can help by teaching the child gestures and words they can use to convey their wants and needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let me start off with a brief story.\u00a0 I have two cats at my house.\u00a0 One recent weekend, I kept hearing these strange scraping noises from the steps.\u00a0 I got up and looked briefly- one cat was pushing his water dish around and blocking the steps.\u00a0 Now that I had the noise figured out, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","schema":"","fname":"","lname":"","position":"","credentials":"","placeID":"","no_match":false,"name":"","company":"","review":"","address":"","city":"","state":"","zip":"","lat":"","lng":"","phone1":"","phone2":"","fax":"","mon1":"","mon2":"","tue1":"","tue2":"","wed1":"","wed2":"","thu1":"","thu2":"","fri1":"","fri2":"","sat1":"","sat2":"","sun1":"","sun2":"","hours-note":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[817,173,52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3145"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12338,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3145\/revisions\/12338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}