What was your favorite thing that happened today? Who is your favorite singer? What is your favorite book? Do you have a favorite sport? I have a favorite time of the year, do you? My babysitter used to show me her favorite thimble. FAVORITE is one of my favorite words and it is powerful. I use it all the time and you should too. It's one of ...

Everyone loves power. Everyone needs words to attain power. We can empower our children with ASD by giving them POWER WORDS or we can leave them powerless. Teaching skills to children with ASD is not enough. Colors, months, dates, counting, are not what make a person successful and functional in the world. This series of Kathie's Dozen Power ...

''Kathie, what's the number one strategy you use with children on the autism spectrum?'' I get asked that question a lot and I always reply with the same response. Any item I can hold in one hand comes up by my face.   That's so simple. But it's not so obvious.   That's so easy. But most people don't do it ...

In my blog on May 31, The Power of a Talking Stick, I gave you the solution if a child with autism or any language disorder is non-verbal or if they are a motor mouth. There were several comments about this blog so I felt it worth a re-visit and another ''Kathie strategy'' for the SLP bag of tricks. The Talking Card and Talking Stick are: FUN ...

I SSSSSSPY! The year is drawing to a close, and my ideas for therapy are dwindling. The other day I pulled out a favorite software program that hadn't seen the light of day for a long time. I'm not sure why I haven't used it lately; it is the perfect therapy activity for the under 6 set: Scholastic's ...

In my last post I blogged about some of the experiences I had attending two days of my state association's annual convention. Today's post is about the rest of my experiences at the PSHA Convention. I tried to pick short courses and seminars based on my areas of interest and areas in which I felt I needed to learn more. Between the two days I ...

In my last blog entry, I presented a dilemma and wondered what SLPs would do in a situation in which they witnessed a staff member behaving inappropriately with a student (based on a newspaper article I read). I didn't get much feedback; I think the answer is obvious - in a situation like this, the SLP should go to an administrator. As SLPs ...

Last time, I blogged about being a member of a state speech-language-hearing association. In that blog I mentioned my state association's upcoming annual convention. Today's post is about some of my experiences at the PSHA Convention. I'll write about the other presentations I attended in my next post. My time at the convention was split among ...

Many children we work with do not see a link between their behavior and immediate positive consequences they can receive, let alone the connection between their behaviors and their long-term impressions on others. As SLPs, these students can be challenging in many ways, not only because it can be difficult for us to get them to participate in ...

When do you elicit a language sample? Certainly when you first see a child you would want to take a language sample. However, if the child is not comfortable on the initial assessment, there is nothing written in stone that says that it has to be completed the first time around. That in itself should tell you something. I feel that ...