Here are some sweet little books for your youngest Valentines this year, along with a few ideas perfect to use for speech therapy with late talking toddlers and preschoolers. Little Blue Truck’s Valentine I love all things related to Little Blue Truck and use these books year round. In this book, Little Blue delivers valentines…

In my week of making lists, I wanted to add a post with recommendations for the best books for speech therapy for toddlers. If you need specific therapy ideas, I’ve devoted 3 entire podcasts to this topic and you can find those here: Making Books Better Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Here’s the list…

Anytime we introduce “theme” toys during therapy time or any time, we’re automatically increasing novelty (becuase it’s new!) which usually drives interest and participation for toddlers. In case you’re looking for a few new holiday items to add to your rotation, here are my favorites from the last few years! As an Amazon affiliate, we…

Buying toys is just about one of my favorite things to do any day of the year. During the holidays, I can hardly resist! Today I want to share my Ultimate Therapy Toy Guide with a few new favorites in a post I’m calling The Best Toys for Speech Therapy for Toddlers with Autism and…

As speech-language pathologists and parents, when a toddler is not talking yet, we rush in to try to help them learn to say new words and pronounce them clearly. When these first attempts don’t work, we become frustrated, sometimes very frustrated, with the lack of progress. This is the point where I usually meet parents…

If I asked you to name the three major cognitive milestones we see babies and toddlers acquire just before they begin to talk, I bet you could come up with those!   Let’s see how you do.   Take a minute and think about it before you keep scrolling.   Before I relieve your suspense and…

Today let’s look at apraxia and autism in toddlers.   According to research from 2015, Tierney and her colleagues found that 63 percent of children with autism also have apraxia. Because of that staggering statistic, as pediatric SLPs, when a child has autism, we should rule out apraxia, and when he has apraxia, we should screen…

Today I want to discuss using music in speech therapy with toddlers with apraxia.   Without a doubt, music is hands down the very best way to introduce prosody into your therapy sessions. No wonder Longfellow, the renowned American poet, described music as a “universal language.”   I certainly have seen it in my own therapy sessions. A…

Today I want to talk about imitation games for toddlers with apraxia.   Learning how to imitate is how all of us learn everything…especially how to talk!    We hear somebody say a word and then we say it.   Verbal imitation is almost always disrupted in very young children with apraxia. Some kids with…

Communicative intent is such a huge predictor in how well a toddler communicates, even before he learns to say words.   As therapists well know, it’s can be sooooo h..a..r..d to teach communicative intent to a toddler who is disconnected or isolated and doesn’t seem to know he’s supposed to want to share messages with…

It’s such a communication killer when an adult corrects every single word attempt out of a child’s mouth. I’ve done it as a therapist. I’ve done it as a mom. I’ve watched other therapists and other moms do it too. Let’s stop.   If you haven’t recognized it yet, there are behavioral consequences we suffer when we overcorrect.…

From The Apraxia Workbooks 1 & 2…   Identifying Apraxia in Toddlers   Now let’s get more specific and talk about identifying apraxia in toddlers. We’re going to look at what the research tells us are the specific kinds of speech errors noted in the speech of toddlers under three who will go on to be…