An Adeona Family Podcast: An Early Childhood Journey
Episode 13: How To Help Children Develop Good Communication Skills
As children develop their communication skills it’s helpful to know what is appropriate and what might need addressing. On this episode of the Adeona Family Podcast, Zoe is joined by professional speech pathologist Claire Mayers who gives practical advice about all things relating to communication in the Early Years, and how to develop these vital skills through interactions with your child on a daily basis.
You will learn:
- The different ways you can approach teaching your child important communication habits
- What to expect developmentally at certain ages
- When to address a stutter
- How to correct mispronunciations
- How to help a fussy eater
- The importance of reading to your child at a young age, and
- What steps you can take to see an allied healthcare professional
Claire pulls back the curtain on speech development, shining a light on how early communication evolves and what you as a parent or care giver can do to facilitate a strong developmental journey. It’s not all about correcting stutters or smoothing out lisps—there’s a broad spectrum when it comes to understanding communication, language, and speech.
Claire reminds us that every child’s journey with words is as unique as their fingerprint. While some may be weaving nine words (or word approximations) into their daily babble by 18 months, the real focus should be on their attempt to talk with you and grasp what’s going on around them. It’s normal for parents to puzzle over whether their child’s speech quirks are just part of growing up or something to discuss with a professional. From those cute sound mix-ups to the occasional stutter, many of these are just stepping stones in their language adventure.
Claire also champions the magic of storytime from the get-go. This helps to sprinkle in extra words and language to your child’s world that they may not come across in the day-to-day.
And for those moments when mealtime feels more like a standoff with a mini gourmet critic, she’s got some gold nuggets of advice. Swap the mealtime battleground for a treasure hunt of tastes, offering different foods without the pressure. It’s all about keeping those food adventures positive and patient, encouraging your little ones to explore the culinary world at their own pace.
Claire’s insights are here to support you in understanding and fostering the tiny wonders of children’s speech and eating explorations. You can find Claire’s Speech Pathology in Coorparoo, and if you would like to contact Claire for further advice, you can reach her at: claire@chattaboutspeech.com
Thank You
We’d love to hear from you! If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions about anything we discussed in this episode, please feel free to reach out – tracy@adeona.com.au.
Our Early Childhood Education Centres
Coorparoo | Mitchelton | Noosaville | Mackay
Podcast Transcription
Zoe (00:11):
Welcome to an early childhood journey today. Thank you for joining us on our episode today. I would like to acknowledge the custodians of the land that we are gathered on today, which are the Turrbal and Yuggera people. Now today, I’m very excited to let you know that we have a special guest person on our podcast today. Claire is not only a mother here at Adeona, but she is also a highly qualified and professional speech pathologist. So welcome, Claire.
Claire (00:40):
Hi Zoe. How are you?
Zoe (00:41):
I’m great. So Claire, maybe we could start by just talking a little bit about you and your background and who you work with.
Claire (00:48):
Sure. So I actually work in disability. So I have worked as a speech pathologist for 12 years, and I started off working in the hospital down at Logan and Goldcoast. And I’ve done some work at different private practices and big disability service providers. So I’ve worked at Montrose, which is one of the biggest disability service providers in Queensland. And currently I work at Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus Queensland, and I also do some private practice.
Zoe (01:11):
Fantastic. And we’ll give you some more information about close private practice at the end. Why not apply that shameless plug? So, Speech Pathology, what exactly is speech pathology, maybe some short-
Claire (01:25):
So we used to obviously be called speech therapists. But now we’re speech pathologist because we do assess and diagnose communication, language, speech disorders, we would call them. So speech pathology, it’s funny, we always get people who say oh, a stutter, or a lisp or something like that. But it’s so much more than that. You know, we see children who are late talkers, who have developmental delay, we see children, obviously, on the spectrum, we see children who make different speech sound errors, so you probably hear a lot of them down in the bigger rooms downstairs, you know, saying tup, for cup, and a few little speech sound errors like that. So we get lots of phone calls from parents, because lots of those can be quite normal. And so we get to see all the speech sound kids, we see stuttering. So lots of fluency issues. Yeah. And then I guess, children who have difficulty understanding directions, parents sort of noticed that they’re giving them a direction, you know, can you put your shoes on and meet me at the door, and they’re not able to do that when you know, these mothers groups that we all join, it’s really easy to compare all the children. So I guess you get a mother’s group and you think oh, I can see little Johnny doing that. But my little one isn’t so, so often we get lots of calls from parents who are worried about their expressive and receptive language. So we do lots of that as well.
Zoe (02:10):
Yeah! And I guess one of the things that is really important to point out in that is that speech pathology, well, it’s like in the title, it says speech, it is about communication. So it’s much deeper.
Claire (02:49):
Yeah, and I also do some AAC and I do the complex feeding caseload as well. So lots of those picky eaters, problem feeders, we call them so children who love their white food, you know, they’re really, they’re not happy to try different ranges of foods. So we do all of that as well. So it’s quite a diverse sort of area of things that we’re able to do and support families with.
Zoe (03:11):
Excellent. So Claire, quite often we get questions, obviously, from families at Adeona, and one of the first questions we get as the children move through the centre is, is my child’s speaking enough? Are they at the right spot in their age bracket? Are they good enough communication skills? And that seems to happen around that one and a half—two year old mark?
Claire (03:35):
Yeah. And that’s a time I guess, because when you have a baby, you know, you’re dying for them to sit up, to eat, to walk. And then once they start walking at that sort of 12 to 15 month phase, then it’s all about the communication, you know, they can’t communicate. And I guess at that stage, too, they start to get a bit frustrated and know themselves a bit more, and they can’t express what they want. So that’s often when we get the calls, at sort of 18 months. Is my child talking enough? Are they you know, what’s the next step? What can I do to support them to communicate more? And I suppose we always say at 18 months, they should have about nine words. And that’s not words that you would hear like, Mum, Dad, cup, car. That’s words and word approximations. So your child might say, weh-weh for water. And I would count that as a word. If they say it consistently. And they say it for the same thing. That’s a word. So I think lots of parents often call us to because there’s so many words that their child’s trying to say, but they’re actually not picking up on exactly what it is. And then you know, it’s really good if you can reinforce those words too. So because they’re not getting that acknowledgement that it is a word and a communication attempt. You know, parents haven’t noticed that that’s a word. So lots of times we do get those 18 months to two years, children come in, it’s so beautiful to see them because you could actually show the parents they’re doing so well. They’re saying so much and then, you know, we can just give a few little things to do. To try and sort of support them to say, I guess a more of range of words or with their communication if but yeah, so we were saying around the 18 months, you want them to have nine words or word approximations. But again, there’s such a big bell curve and what’s normal. So some kids, like my little Harry, who’s up here in green tribe to he’s got about probably 15 words, and he’s 15 months old. But when Hamish my second one who came through here, he probably only had about six or seven and 18 months. But again, if you can see that they’ve got that understanding there, and what we’d call that communication intense, if they’ve given you good eye contact, if they’re really social little communicators, we probably wouldn’t worry so much about the number of words, you know, but if they’ve only got one or two words, but unable to give you eye contact and aren’t looking for that interaction, and that communication, then we’d be a bit more concerned. So I guess that’s about the whole picture. It’s not necessarily about the number of words. And I know, it’s really tricky. When you see other kids of similar ages to your kids, because it is sort of instinct to compare, like, Oh, mine’s not saying so much. You know, this one’s got 20 words. And I remember in mother’s group, a mom had a little I think she was about three. And she writes her name. And I remember thinking, oh, gosh, my boys aren’t that advanced, fine motor is still not their area of where they excel. But I guess it’s important to remember too as a parent, they’re all fitting on that curve somewhere. And there’s a really big range of normal. Yeah.
Zoe (06:30):
And I guess, would it be fair to also look for that comprehension as well?
Claire (06:36):
Yeah definitely. And I mean, some kids are just quiet, especially if they’ve got bigger families, louder siblings.
Zoe (06:42):
Even adults.
Claire (06:43):
Yeah, and I think it’s really important to remember too, you know, it’s only an issue if it’s an issue to you. So we see some kids who, you know, maybe a bit later, they’re from a very quiet family. And it’s never been an issue. But you can see they, what they have what we call receptive language, that’s really good. They’re just, they’re a bit quieter. And that can just be their personality. I’m obviously not one of those people. I love to chat. All My Children do too, our house is very loud, but you know, different personality types as well. So keeping that in mind. But yeah, like I said, if you can see that communication intent, the social communication, the eye contact, and what we’d call making a range of noises as well. So you’d be concerned about an 18 month old if they hadn’t babbled and made sounds. So the first thing we would do with something like that would be say, have you had a hearing assessment? So often, you know, children who aren’t making a lot of noises from that 12 to 18 months, it’s a good time to think that’s something you can sort of proactively go and do get a hearing assessment, because if you were to call a speech pathologist, or even go see your GP, that would be the first thing that they would do, be to recommend a hearing assessment. Yeah.
Zoe (07:50):
Excellent. So I guess moving on to the next question that we always get moving down the line of the progression of the age groups through here is around specific sounds. So parents start to get worried if there is like, if their child still has a lisp or dropping sounds or—
Claire (08:06):
Yeah, so they’re what we call phonological processes. So there’s articulation, which is how we make all the sounds and articulate them. And then there’s what we call phonological processes. So all children will go through phonological processes. So that’s where they’ll do what we call fronting, they’ll say tup for cup. And you know, 90% of children will do that. And there’s an age of which they just stop doing that and start saying the normal sound, or the sound that’s supposed to be in that place, they’ll start putting the C, at the front of the word, but then I guess there’s some that are sort of what we call more atypical, so leaving off a final consonant or middle consonant. So if you’re saying buh-uh, for butter, and wah-uh for water, and you’re doing that quite consistently in the middle of words, and when you have those, what we’d call deviant processes, so that aren’t, so every child won’t do that we’d call them a deviant phonological process. And when you see them, you find the intelligibility of the speech, so it’s more difficult to understand is affected. So your educators might be saying to you, I’m only understanding you might have a four year old, maybe 30%, of what little Johnny’s saying, you know, he’s saying a lot, and I can see he’s really trying, but, but I’m not understanding much. So, you know, we would be saying, by age four unfamiliar listeners, so your educators that should be understanding 70 to 80, sort of, bordering towards that 90%. So if people are having trouble understanding, you know, that’s a good time to again, have a review by the speech pathologist, but a lot of those speech sounds or a lisp, any children that you’re seeing under the age of five through here, a lisp is one of those things that so many children have, often it’s to do with their dentition as well, when their teeth fall out. It will sort of improve on its own, some of them won’t. There’s different types of lisps and some of them are more of a concern than others. So I think, you know, lisps are quite typical, though, there’s a few things like the thumb for thumb, that, again, is another process that we would expect to see in a child till they’re about six or seven. I’m trying to think of some others. But there’s some really common ones that you know, lots of children make, leaving off initial sounds and final sounds, and especially as they’re learning speech, it’s just really, if it’s impacting that intelligibility. And I guess, if you’re noticing that lots of the children that they’re playing with aren’t sort of making that error. A good thing to do too, is if you notice that they’re saying tup, for cups, so so they’re putting a T at the start, if you can hear them making a C, but in other words, so often, they’ll start doing it at the end. So they might be able to say, tick, and they can do the K at the end. So that can be a good little rule of thumb. Oh, they’re saying it at the end of words. So give them another few months. And hopefully, because they’ve got that K sounding what we’d call another word position, they should usually it will start to sort of move to that generalised to other word positions. They’ve got the capacity to articulate that sound. Yeah. And I mean, all of a sudden, they’re not going to wake up one day and just be able to say all the sounds it’s, you know, a process of them learning, putting them together, letting the motor plans. Yeah, so it takes time for their speech to become clear and adult like, but then there are some children who do speak like adults from age three. But they’re definitely not not, you know, not the majority. Yeah.
Zoe (11:27):
So I guess one of the other things that we sometimes come across here at the centre, and parents all often wonder if it’s a habit, or if it’s an actual issue that their child has is if they have a stutter, Because sometimes as, especially when in this age group, I think, because they’re just learning to talk. And sometimes it’s not fluid yet.
Claire (11:50):
Yeah and we often say, I mean, there’s different types of stutters. And I will tell you, the times to be, when you’d be concerned about a stutter, but most stutters, all children will actually go through a phase of disfluency. And usually, it’s at a period of time when they’re going through what we call a language acquisition period. So they’re developing a lot of language. And they just need that—they’re just trying to get so much out. And it’s really tricky. So you hear them—I, I, I—those, you know, especially those initial word repetitions, sometimes sound repetitions. And what we would say is, if you’re hearing that for a period of a few weeks, or even six or eight weeks, and then you’re not noticing it so much, so a typical developmental stutter will come and go, it will come and go, you will probably only see a speech pathologist if the parents were very concerned. So if, if they were very concerned, if it had been going for longer than six months, so a period of six months, you’d see a speech pathologist straightaway, if your child had what we’d call secondary behaviours. So if you’re noticing the stutter, and it seems like they’ve got a lot of tension in their neck, or it’s coming with an eyeblink, any kind of sounds like *lip smacking* instead of sort of replacing the sounds, or any kind of what we call a secondary behaviour, then it would be really important to get that checked by a speech pathologist. But a lot of stuttering is really normal. But it can be quite frustrating to for parents, when your little one comes home from daycare, and they’re dying to tell you something or you’re in a rush downstairs doing lunches, what would you like? I, I, I, I — you know, it’s really important, though, to just give them if you can that time to finish, not to interject, let them get through it. And remember, it is a phase like so many things with kids is a phase.
Zoe (13:29):
Yeah and I guess that’s one of the other things that families quite often ask us is should they correct children? With sound?
Claire (13:38):
Yeah, so with sounds there’s lots of different ways to, to correct a sound. So if your child says, you know, that’s a ‘pish’ instead of that’s a ‘fish’, I would always say to my boys, you meant to say the sound that’s a fish, great talking, but you wouldn’t repeat the error. So you wouldn’t say it’s not a ‘pish’, it’s a ‘fish’, because then you’ve reinforced the error. So and as well, I wouldn’t expect them to repeat that. So depending on their age, and and where they were out, you know, some kids get really self conscious with things and their their personality type. So some kids that would be enough to just say, fish, great, that’s a fish but not have any expectations on them to say fish and you’re just giving them the correct model back to reinforce that. But then others you know, you could say sweetie, fish you meant to say the ‘F’ sound can you say the sound fish, Let’s say it together. But again, depending on their personality type, because the last thing you want to do is make them feel really anxious about their speech. And like there’s something wrong especially when, like I said, so many of those errors are age appropriate. But as a parent, I think it’s just really important to give clear models of what the sound should be. Not necessarily pointing out the error but ‘fish’ starts with a ‘F’ sound. You wouldn’t even need to say you said the wrong sound. You could just say that’s a fish. It starts with a ‘F’ sound. Good job. I love that you told me that was a fish.
Zoe (14:58):
I’ve been also, that kind of just reminded me, I’ve been been reading articles recently about how children acquire speech sound recognition, like in that first 12 months of their life. And if they don’t hear certain sounds, and they’re not exposed to them, for example, from different languages, yeah, like it’s much harder. Yeah, it’s much harder for them to pick up. So I guess that highlights the importance of speaking to your children.
Claire (15:21):
Yeah, always speaking. And we always say like, it’s never too early to read books to them. Like it’s funny, Harry just destroys books. He has no respect for books, and it drives me insane. Because the older two were always great with books. But even from a little age, like he knows what to do with a book. So sometimes we’ll get parents with, you know, a nine or 10 month old and they’ll say, Should I be reading the books? And I’m like, Yes, and they say, but they can’t really attend to them. But the thing is, they’ll never learn to attend to them unless they see them every day, they know how to turn the pages, it’s really important from you know, as early as possible, to just get them in the habit of reading books, pointing to things, showing them different things. And I guess reading a book opens up new language that they don’t hear, you know, just hanging around the house, or going about your daily business with you. You think you probably don’t talk about zebras, lions and baboons or different things on a daily basis. There is, you know, in a book, it can really help just expand their imagination and lots of different things. Yeah.
Zoe (16:23):
Now Claire, before we started this, we were just chatting about what we’d talk about. And one things you mentioned, and I thought this would probably be really interesting to families was about fussy eaters, and how that plays a role in your job.
Claire (16:36):
Yeah, so we see lots of fussy eaters, it’s a really big thing, you know, children who just love their white food, they don’t like different textured foods. And I guess it’s, it’s lots of different reasons for why that happens. And it can be so stressful as a parent, if you’re worried about your child getting adequate nutrition, or eating the different food groups or, or even their weight, you know, if they’re a little bit underweight, you know, and that’s the time when, you know, it can be very stressful, especially if your child has, you know, complex medical needs or any other anything going on. But we do see lots of Yeah, lots of children who, you know, it’s quite a tug of war, and it becomes a really stressful time meal times. And that can be really hard for parents. But then it’s funny, because I’m sure you have the ones who come here, and then just eat everything here in a different environment, and everyone else is eating. And that can be very frustrating to parents. But I think a couple of little things that are important to remember is, it’s never a good idea to force a child to eat anything they don’t want to, as a parent it’s your job to provide options to your child. And it’s your child’s job to decide how much and what they want to eat. And that can be so frustrating when you’ve spent half an hour preparing something beautiful for them, and they want to throw it on the ground. You know, but I think to always keeping really positive self, you know, talk around meal times, that’s yummy. I love the way that tastes and talking about the food not using negative words, you know, oh, we don’t like that, or you don’t like that, you know? Oh, that’s green and talking about the properties of the food? Well, it tastes like it’s got little bits in it. It’s what we call broccoli, it’s yummy. Would you like to try it and if they don’t want to, that’s okay. Because we say children need to be exposed to food, you know, a number of times before they can actually decide if they like them or don’t like them. So you know, you might give them a piece of broccoli one night, and they don’t like it. But then you might present it 10 times. And after the 10th time, they think that funny looking food hasn’t hurt me yet. I might give it a go. Whereas if on the first night, you’ve tried it, you’ve tried to force it into their mouth, you’ve automatically made them feel anxious about the broccoli. So I think it’s really important to just Yeah, introduce foods, keep them on the plate, maybe they’ll warm up to them. And you know, not everyone likes broccoli, I think that’s important to remember too, not every child will eat everything, even the best eaters.
Zoe (18:55):
I actually saw an ad by one of the biggest supermarket chains, I can’t remember which one now. But um, it was it showed, you know, five blueberries and five salty crackers. And it was saying, you know, a blueberry can be squishy and bitter and sweet and mushy. And whereas, you know, a cracker is the same every single time.
Claire (19:18):
And that’s often why children like it because it’s the predictability of it. You know, you think of how they start off and it’s that, you know, the white breast milk, it’s very comforting and even when they hold a bottle, they hold it the midline, so comforting and then all of a sudden, they’re presented with these colours. And obviously everyone has different visual preferences and sensory preferences. So for some children that blueberry can be really overwhelming, you know, and a white cracker just feels so much safer. I love a plain Sakata so I’m not one to judge.
Zoe (19:50):
Salty cracker. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess that’s also important why you expose them multiple times because they might get the bitter ones.
Claire (19:57):
I’ve got a great story, my little Hamish So he’s our middle child. He’s always been a precious petal. Zoe would know this. He cried every day for a year when he came here. And he has improved now in school. And Hamish the first night we served him a burger. He’s always been a little bit hit and miss, and he still is with meals. And then we made a burger. The whole family was having burgers, we’d moved to Perth, actually. And I said, you know, he’s gonna have a burger. There was a few white chips on the side. I said, if he just eats chips, I don’t care. He’s having a burger. So anyway, he looked at the burger and said, I’m not eating that. And just, my husband was ready to lose it. And I said, don’t say anything. So Hamish got up. He left the table about probably two or three minutes later, William, Jasper and I were all still eating our burger. He came back sat at the table looked at the burger again. And you could see his little mind thinking, huh? Anyway, then he left the table again came back the third time he came back, he sat and ate about four bites of the burger and all the chips. I was stoked. And you know what? He’s eaten a burger every time since. Whereas you think if I had said to him, yeah, you must eat that burger, sit there and put it in your mouth. Automatically, he would have thought, Oh, this is something I don’t want to do. I don’t like it. So it’s really important to just try and take a deep breath. And we have a sip of wine at dinner time
Zoe (21:12):
And regulate yourself first.
Claire (21:14):
Just relax. It’s not it’s not personal for your cooking. It’s just little people want to decide when they eat how they eat.
Zoe (21:22):
And we always say to families, they’re not going to not eat like they will eventually, like they’re not going to starve themselves.
Claire (21:31):
But usually, it’s those children who have you know, they’re underweight, they have reflux, and there’s something else going on. Yeah. But that is a big myth that children will not starve themselves if they have medical or complex medical needs. Yeah. But but most typically developing children who are eating, you know, they will eat eventually.
Zoe (21:50):
Excellent. All right. So if we have families who are stuck, and they want some advice on where to go, sometimes that can be a little overwhelming in itself. Do they go to a GP and get a referral? Can they go straight to-
Claire (22:07):
And it can be hard too because that acknowledgement with your children that maybe something isn’t quite right, maybe we need some support with something, what do we do, it’s really important that I always think to take the step and make an appointment. Because then you know, one way or the other and you can do something proactive to support your child’s communication, Speech, Language, or even OT, you know, any Allied Health, whatever the issue might be, to take it a proactive step to find out how you can support your child to improve on the skills that they have. So to see an allied health, so speech, occupational therapist and physio, you don’t need a GP referral, you can go to the GP to get what’s called an Enhanced Primary Care Plan, which gives you five sessions with a Medicare rebate. Or it might be called a chronic disease management plan, they change it every few years. But if you go see your GP, you can get them to write a letter, so that you get some Medicare rebate, because obviously it is expensive things speech pathology, you know, OT and physio, you can get it on your private health, but usually they sort of cap off at a limit. So a lot of speech pathologists, I guess there’s the public health services, they do have a couple of years waitlist at the moment, you know, you can see your local Child Development Service and book in there. And they’ll, you’ll see a speech pathologist who will give you a screening, and some some advice. Depending on what your your area is, then obviously, you can call up a private therapist, some private therapists with smaller practices, so like me, would you actually call and speak to me, so I’m always happy to have a 10 minute chat, because sometimes too, you get parents who call, and it’s not something I would often say, you know, tell me about it. I think you could probably call me in three months, and I would be, you know, trying to do this, this and this and look for this, you know, if you’re really worried, I’m more than happy to see you. But otherwise, you know, make an appointment in three months time, and you can always cancel it, or just put on your fridge, you know, and here’s what you’d be looking for in that time. So lots of smaller private practices, you know, without the admin person, you can just call up and speak. I’ve got a couple of friends who run private practices as well, we’re all the same. You can call up for a quick chat and, you know, and then depending too, I guess, on what you’re looking for, you know, do you want an assessment and to know what’s wrong? Do you want to just come in for a session for 45 minutes, have someone eyes on your child, let you know if there’s a few little things you can do to really support or boost their language development and then come back for a review session? You know, or if it’s speech sounds, do you just want someone to say, Oh, those speech sounds are age appropriate and developmentally normal, you know, and they’re developing beautifully. If you’re still worried in 12 months, come back sort of thing. So it depends what you’re looking for. But yeah, I think always just engage a therapist, a therapist that you feel comfortable with, you know, a phone chat is a good way to see if they’re someone who you could see yourself getting along with and becoming, you know, a partner in therapy because speech pathology is really a partnership you know, you can’t go and see someone and have them fix the language or speech problem, you are going to need to do some work at home, because you’re the ones who are with the children all the time. So yeah, important to remember that, yeah, you’re looking for someone who you can work with, and who you think will support your family to get where you need to be.
Zoe (25:17):
Are there any significant implications for not addressing certain speech issues, like I used to work for Ed Queensland and with additional needs children, and I would quite often get children in grade five and six, who still had significant speech issues.
Claire (25:33):
We do say an early intervention, getting on to things early is, is the best way because sometimes too, those speech sound errors, if they’re significant can come across when children, you know, start Prep then in their literacy, so as they’re acquiring literacy, they’ll be writing ‘thumb’ as ‘fumb’ because that’s how they sound it out. So sometimes those errors, you know, those little issues can then become bigger issues, you know, whereas if you’ve seen someone earlier that can nip that in the bud. And then as well, they can have a quick screen before prep of their literacy skills and say, Oh, they don’t have the sort of what we call meta linguistic or pre literacy skills that I would expect them to have. Let’s just do a little bit of work on that so that when they go to prep, they’re really ready to sit in the classroom to learn. And to be, you know, just ready to go.
Zoe (26:16):
Yeah. Would you recommend for people to do a pre prep screening for speech?
Claire (26:21):
Yeah, well-
Zoe (26:22):
If you can get into it.
Claire (26:23):
I know, the wait list is so long. I was talking to a friend today. And she was saying she’s got 200 children on her waitlist at the moment just at Morningside. Yeah. So if you can get into one, lots of speech pathologists do offer to come I know, a few years ago, I came into daycare, yeah, and do a quick screening. You know, they take 15 minutes cost about $50. They’re not super expensive, but it can be a good like, tick and flick. I haven’t seen any significant concerns. But again, I guess at that same time, it’s a tick and flick. It’s not a – if you did have a child that you thought, Oh, I’m actually really concerned about my child, I would probably just go straight for a speech pathology assessment. Because again, it’s sort of a 15 minutes eyes on quick tick and flick. Yeah.
Zoe (27:08):
Well that’s fantastic, Claire. That’s a lot of great, great information, I guess. Do you have any last sage words of advice for families?
Claire (27:16):
I think it’s important for parents to feel like they’re all doing a great job and the best job that they can and if you are concerned about your child, you know, the best thing you can do is go see your GP, call a speech pathologist, call the OT, call a physio, you know, take that step. You know, don’t put your head in the sand and hope it gets better. Engage someone, someone who you trust, someone who you sort of make a connection with on the phone, and find out what you can do to support your child to get where they need to be or, you know, to help support their language development. Yeah, I think that’s really the main message.
Zoe (27:50):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much Claire. And as I said, we’ll include some shameless plugging for you, in our notes for the show. So it’s been wonderful having you and thank you for joining us everyone!
Claire (28:03):
Thank you.