Despite events like Hurricane Irene pummeling the East Coast, I really love the end of August - this time of the year has always been one of my favorites. The weather in the northeast part of the country begins to change, becoming more unpredictable. The sky turns temperamental and a cool breeze will begin to cut through the summer heat. At ...

  Our young clients with ASD aren't really so difficult when it comes to lesson plans for therapy and fulfilling benchmarks and outcomes. In fact, they're very easy. Look at my list of Top Five Necessities and you'll see that the first four are ''get it and you'll have it'' kind of things. 1.    ...

Why not get the school year started off with a special, personal note from YOU to the parents of your most challenging students.   Dear Parents,             As speech/language pathologist (SLP) at (name of school) Elementary School, I look forward to working with (child's first ...

Questions from parents of children with ASD are a part of a speech pathologist's professional life. The top two questions that parents have always asked me are: ''When will my child speak,'' and ''When will he/she be potty trained?'' Those are big questions and tough ones because no one can answer either of them. It is not always necessary to ...

This week is the second part of my interview with Helen Vadala, MS, OTL, an occupational therapist working and supervising in both the homecare and preschool settings in Delaware County in Pennsylvania. Our discussion continues as we look at the recent changes in homecare and how budget cuts are affecting early intervention, as well as ...

Today's post is about maximizing the work we do in the classroom by promoting carryover at home. This topic was inspired by one of the requests shared during the February SLP poll, which specially asked for: ''Support and ideas to give parents to help them work on skills between therapy visits'' Daily practice and reinforcement is very important ...

For today's post, I have chosen a list of questions and created a survey specifically designed for speech therapists working in early intervention. The survey looks at a variety of topics and issues which we face as therapists and my hope is that the results of this poll will be very beneficial to all of us as therapists and maybe even beyond as a ...