Tree of Life SLP | Therapist

Tree of Life SLP

Phone: +61 427 988 103

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25.01.2022 This is something I am very passionate about. Please, leave the iPad at home when you go to dinner with your family, talk, interact and embrace conversations. Please leave the iPad at home when you are shopping with your child. Talk about their surroundings, engage, and include your child in the wonders of developing their speech and language skills. xo https://www.cnn.com//screen-time-lower-brain-de/index.html

25.01.2022 Happy Monday! All Speech-Language Pathology therapy sessions are back on this week. Thank you for your patience and understanding. ... Tree of Life SLP looks forward to working with you to achieve your speech-language goals!

21.01.2022 Tree of Life SLP can offer LSVT therapy.... What is LSVT? LSVT LOUD is an effective treatment (four individual 60 minute sessions per week for a month) speech treatment for individuals with Parkinson disease (PD) and other neurological conditions. LSVT LOUD, named for Mrs. Lee Silverman (Lee Silverman Voice Treatment LSVT) was developed in 1987 and has been scientifically studied for nearly 20 years.... What the treatment does: LSVT LOUD improves vocal loudness by stimulating the muscles of the voice box (larynx) and speech mechanism through a systematic hierarchy of exercises. Focused on a single goal speak LOUD! the treatment improves respiratory, laryngeal and articulatory function to maximize speech intelligibility. What the treatment does not do: The treatment does not train people for shouting or yelling; rather, LSVT LOUD uses loudness training to bring the voice to an improved, healthy vocal loudness with no strain. Call Melody today on 0427988103 to discuss your speec-language goals!

21.01.2022 Tree of Life SLP continues to be thankful for the continued support from the Tablelands, Cairns, Innsifail and FNQ region. We will continue to offer a holistic, person centred therapy approach to achieve your swallowing, and speech-language goals. We strive to provide the best evidence based practice, and hope to be adding another SLP to our team as our referals for after hours outreach, and education continues to grow.

19.01.2022 Some children find the world to be too chaotic, and expectations and demands they cannot understand may confuse them. Verbal instructions and explanations are often not adequate to provide the information a child needs in order to comprehend. Think about what you do to remember an instruction. Do you write it down, draw it, enter it as a reminder into your phone?... Children too often need the support of having information presented in visual form. Some children learn best through what they see, and using visual strategies at home and in the classroom builds on this strength. Many children are not easily able to understand spoken directions. However, it is not always obvious that a child is having difficulty because they may be quite adept at following environmental cues. They may be the child who waits, and looks around the classroom to copy what the other children are doing. It is also difficult to judge children’s ability to comprehend by evaluating their spoken language. Some children are able to repeat very clearly what is said, but still do not understand the meaning of the message. Children who use a lot of echolalia are particularly difficult to judge. What are some examples of visual strategies? * Schedules * Mini-schedules * Calendars * Task Organizers * Management Tools * Work Systems * Transition Helpers * Communication Between Environments Speak to your local Speech-Language Pathologist to discuss your child's communication needs.

19.01.2022 The only way to carry my resources...

18.01.2022 Social Communication Skills Why do they need a Speech-Language Pathologist, they speak so well! Just imagine:... You invited some friends over for a Sunday BBQ. Your youngest son sees your friend reach for some chocolate slice and says, "Better not eat those, or you'll get fat." This shocks you, and you honestly cannot believe he would say that! You chat with another mother at school about her new car. She has trouble staying on topic and starts talking about her favorite coffee shop. She looks down at the ground, and has difficulty understanding your humor. She keeps talking, even when you look at your watch and say, "I can’t believe its lunch time, it’s getting late." You finally leave the conversation, and start thinking about how hard it is to talk with her. Both your son and the school mum speak well. What they may have trouble with is social communication, also called pragmatics. These are the rules that we follow when we talk. There are rules about when and how you should talk to people. We use facial expressions or gestures to share how we feel. We learn how to let someone know when we change the topic, and eye contact. Knowing and using these rules makes it easier to communicate. Social communication includes three major skills: Using language for different reasons, such as: Greeting. Saying "hello" or "goodbye." Informing. "I'm going to get a cookie." Demanding. "Give me a cookie right now." Promising. "I'm going to get you a cookie." Requesting. "I want a cookie, please." Changing language for the listener or situation, such as: Talking differently to a baby than to an adult. Giving more information to someone who does not know the topic. Knowing to skip some details when someone already knows the topic. Talking differently in a classroom than on a playground. Following rules for conversations and storytelling, such as: Taking turns when you talk. Letting others know the topic when you start talking. Staying on topic. Trying another way of saying what you mean when someone did not understand you. Using gestures and body language, like pointing or shrugging. Knowing how close to stand to someone when talking. Using facial expressions and eye contact. These rules may be different if you come from another culture.

18.01.2022 "Believe in your infinate potential. Your limitations are those you set upon yourself" - Roy Bennett

17.01.2022 All Tree of Life SLP appointments are cancelled this week, as Melody is currently in hospital. An email will be sent, sorry for the inconvenience. Melody values your support, and continues to look forward to working with you to achieve you speech-language goals! Have a fantastic week.

16.01.2022 A typical "swallow" involves several different muscles and nerves; it is a surprisingly complex process. Dysphagia can be caused by a difficulty anywhere in the swallowing process. I have a strong clinical interest in this area of Speech-Language Pathology. Some patients have dysphagia and are unaware of it in these cases, it may go undiagnosed and not be treated.... Undiagnosed dysphagia may also lead to dehydration and malnutrition. The following symptoms have been reported: Choking when eating. Coughing or gagging when swallowing. Drooling. Food or stomach acid backing up into the throat. Recurrent heartburn. Hoarseness. Sensation of food getting stuck in the throat or chest, or behind the breastbone. Unexplained weight loss. Bringing food back up (regurgitation). Difficulty controlling food in the mouth. Difficulty starting the swallowing process. Recurrent pneumonia. Inability to control saliva in the mouth. Patients may feel like "the food has got stuck." If you, or know someone who has experienced difficulties eating or drinking, call Melody today to discuss your swallowing needs: https://binged.it/2Wy9NPM

15.01.2022 ‘There’s always been concerns that dummies can stunt a child’s speech development - and new research has proved that’s the case.’ The use of dummies, is a common practice in many countries. Dummies have been used with young children for many years. Did you know? - evidence of the use of dummies have been found in Cypriot and Roman graves dating from as long ago as 1000BC. Despite their popularity and long history, the use of dummies is a controversial topic amongst professi...onals and parents/carers. A study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claims to be the first report to discover a direct link between oral-motor movements and speech perception. Babies studied by researchers weren’t able to distinguish between letters when they had a dummy in their mouth, leading researchers to conclude that babies need to move their tongues to help their speech develop Many parents choose to use a dummy to soother their baby, and I really think this is fine if they are used in moderation, says parenting expert Fi Star-Stone, founder of Childcare Is Fun. Overall, it is suggested that sticking to bed and nap times or times of discomfort or stress is better than daily continued use as this is when potential problems such as dental and speech development can occur. Encouraging your child to speak while they have a dummy in their mouth should be discouraged because: It may reduce the amount of babbling, a vital stage needed before a child can talk. Children need to practice this at all times Children learn words by listening to & copying adults. A dummy prevents a child from copying words & sounds back correctly. Many speech sounds are made at the front of the mouth (p, b, t , d, s) Regular dummy/ bottle users will struggle to develop these sounds and may then need speech therapy. The more a child talks with a dummy the higher the risk of needing long term speech therapy. A child is much less likely to talk if they have an object in their mouth. A Manchester study has shown that over half of all dummy users in the area were referred for speech therapy

12.01.2022 Thank you for allowing me to work with your children to develop their early literacy, speech and language skills

10.01.2022 If there is a message you need to hear today, this may be it! If it is for you, or a loved one, remember this! Dr Seuss is a fantastic choice for childrens books!

08.01.2022 The first area of Phonological Awareness Skills is to understand the concept of a word, and identify a word vs sound. Most preschool children know many hundreds, maybe thousands of words, but many probably don’t understand the concept of a word vs sound. If you say to them What is the word for this? while pointing to an apple, many children would not know to say apple and not an apple or a piece of fruit. If you ask your child, is d a sound or a word? they may have... difficulty responding correctly. It is easiest to introduce the concept of a word by talking about nouns to begin with. Preschoolers need to be taught that their names and the names of objects are ‘words’. When they understand this, move onto words for actions and describing words Activity: Draw some fish onto paper cups. Place a paper clip on the top of each fish and spread them out, on the floor. write a sound, or a word inside of the cup (Make sure that your have some words and some sounds fish). You may need to have at least 8 cups. You can make a rod out of a ruler, or stick from your back yard. You can add a magnet on the end of a string. How: Have your child can take turns ‘fishing’ with the fishing rod. When they catch a fish they can give it to you, and you can say the word or sound on that fish. They child must say whether they heard a word or a sound. Note that this activity is a listening and discrimination activity you say what is on the card, and your child will say what they heard. Continue taking turns until all the fish are caught. Remember to reinforce using the words ‘word’ and ‘sound’ and give your child lots of praise and encouragement. If your child says the right answer, you could say something like: Yes, you’re right dolphin is a word If your child says the wrong answer, you could say: Did you hear a word? I think it might be a sound. Have another listen. If your child says the letter name, not the sound, you could say, yes that is the letter s, what sound does it make?

07.01.2022 I have spoken to many families regarding using the word no to their children. Your instant thought is that I may be suggesting that we shouldn’t tell our children no. Not entirely, here I am referring to negative vocabulary (no, stop, shut up) rather than a exposing your children to a positive language rich environment (do we put our feet on chairs, or do we sit on chairs?). Cognitive, experience is sequential. Experiences in infancy establish habits of seeking, noticing,... and incorporating new and more complex experiences, as well as schemas for categorizing and thinking about experiences. Neurologically, infancy is a critical period because cortical development is influenced by the amount of central nervous system activity stimulated by experience. A study was conducted by Hart and Risley who undertook 2.5 years of observing 42 families for an hour each month to learn what went on in their homes with 1-2 year olds. The data showed us that ordinary families differ immensely in the amount of experience within language and interaction they regularly provide their children and the differences in children’s experiences are strongly linked to children’s language accomplishments at age 3. Extrapolated to the first four years of life, a child would have accumulated 560,000 more instances of encouraging feedback (positive language), than discouraging feedback (negative language). This means, in four years, a child in a positive rich language environment would accumulate 45 million words, compared to a child in a negative language environment, with a record of 13 million words. After reading this passage, please don’t every feel guilty, or bad towards how you are parenting. This information is purely to support my clinical advice and support for my families to assist in the growth of their children’s speech and language development. You are doing an amazing job, my role is to work and support your skills, to develop your child’s language skills.

03.01.2022 "How can Speech-Language Pathologists provide therapy support for people who have mental health difficulties?" Every day, I strive to educate and provide support for the community on how we can assist people to communicate to their full potential. This is an interesting read. The statistics on the occurrence of dysphagia within this demographic also provides a strong rationale why Speech-Language Pathology supports should be included in their NDIS funded plans.... I am thankful I have the opportunity to provide therapy support for individuals who have mental health difficulties.

03.01.2022 Recently I have had the pleasure in working with various day care centres around the Tablelands. They have identified that phonological awareness is the one area of instruction that has been missing, or that may have been inadequately addressed with struggling kindergarten students. What is Phonological awareness?... Competence in early language literacy provides a strong foundation for successful reading. A necessary component of this process is the development of phonological awareness skills. Dr. Reid Lyon, National Institutes of Health, has stated that reading deficits in many children can be prevented if diagnosed early and a research based intervention is implemented. Phonological awareness is not phonics. Phonics is the relationships between sounds and their symbols (letters), and the methods of instruction used to teach those relationships. Phonological awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate speech sounds. It is also the understanding that speech is composed of a sequence of sounds (phonemes) that are combined and can be recombined to form other words. This ability must be present if a child is to successfully map the sounds onto print to decode words (reading). Tree of Life SLP will discuss and provide activities to foster the following stages of Phonological Awareness skills; 1. LISTENING the ability to attend to and distinguish both environmental and speech sounds from one another. 2. RHYME - the correspondence of ending sounds of words or lines of verse. Rhyming is the ability to identify words that have identical final sound segments. M exposure 3. WORD AWARENESS - the knowledge that sentences consist of words and that these words can be manipulated. 4. SYLLABLE AWARENESS the ability to hear parts or segments of phonemes that comprise the rhythm of the word. 5. PHONEMIC AWARENESS - the ability to attend to, identify, and manipulate the sounds that are representative of graphemes in the English language. o exposure to alliteration in text o initial sound identification/comparison o sound/symbol correspondence o final sound identification o phoneme counting (with and without visual aids) o phoneme segmentation o phoneme blending (synthesis) o phoneme deletion o phoneme substitution

02.01.2022 An exciting opportunity is currently available to join Tree of Life SLP.

02.01.2022 I love books! Books open up an amazing imaginative world for children! Children who have lots of experiences with books absorb the rhythms and patterns of language, it helps build their phonological awareness, and, at surprisingly early ages, begin to imitate the language and gestures their parents or caregivers use while sharing stories. I like to use the word, ‘sharing’ the book experience, rather than reading the texts word for word. ... When you share books with your child you support emerging literacy as you: help your child learn that pictures and words are symbols expose your child to new words, thereby increasing their vocabulary familiarize your child with the conventions of print and following narrative structures. Embrace the story and point to the pictures, talk about and describe what is on the page. But, most of all don’t forget to make it fun! Add silly noises, songs, vary your pitch, all of these strategies will make story time fun, and assist with your child to engage in the positive experience of books! Books do not need to be expensive, head down to your local second hand shop, or borrow from your local library! Thanks Allison for the beautiful photo of my nephew!