11 Mar 2019

BY: admin

ABACAS Team / Psychologists

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Amazing Amigos – Social Skills Program for 4 to 6 year olds

In Term Two, our group social skills programs start up again. Social skills are what we need to be able to make and keep friends. For young children the emphasis is on learning how to play co-cooperatively with other children.

Our “Amazing Amigos” groups is a social skills group targeted at Kindergarten & Pre-Primary students. Children in these groups don’t need to have a diagnosis to benefit. We will teach social skills using modelling, role playing and hands on skills practice. Children will be able to try new skills and polish existing social skills amongst peers and supportive adults. The program is 10 weeks and fits in with school the school term. Sessions are run after school on a Wednesday afternoon from 4.00pm.

The specific skills taught each term will be determined by group needs. In general, we will be looking to teach or refine skills such as: asking for help; sharing; greeting others; turn taking and protective behaviours.

Where: Child Wellbeing Centre at our Tuohy Lane offices, Midland.

When: Wednesday afternoons 4.00pm – 5.00pm during the school term

Who is suited: Children aged between 4 and 6 years old who need help with their social skills. Diagnoses are not essential.

How much: $58.53 per session, to be paid each week of attendance.

How to get involved: Contact our Reception on 9274 7062 to book an initial appointment with Simone or Toni.

At the initial appointment we will talking to you about your child’s needs so we can work out whether the group program is what they need.

For more information about our other social skills programs, please follow the link:

https://www.childwellbeingcentre.net.au/services/social-skills-programs/

06 Mar 2019

BY: admin

Occupational Therapist Team

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Hand dominance & crossing the midline

As a baby develops they reach a stage where they realise their hands belong to them and they can use them to reach, grasp, manipulate and investigate. Efficient vision provides the basis of motivation to reach out, touch and explore a familiar face and new things. During the first 6 months, hand movements progress, consisting of voluntary grasp and release, objects are exchanged between both hands. Typically babies will explore objects with their mouths as well as their eyes.

Coordinating two hands

To use both hands together is particularly complex. Both hands need to carry out a different movement task at the same time. One hand develops as the dominant hand, superior at manipulation skills, while the other becomes the helper, or supporting hand. This occurs between the age of 4 and 6 years. How does this work?

The ability to use both sides of the body together is part of general coordination development, it is known as bilateral coordination. Both sides of the brain work together, the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, while the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. As babies develop, they move through predictable movement patterns that integrate as they refine a skill. This includes 3 stages of bilateral coordination development.

1) Symmetrical bilateral coordination, or moving one side of the body in ‘mirror image’ to the other. By 3 months old, babies have more symmetry in their posture and movements, for example when babies first discover their hands, they bring them both to their midline and kick their legs together in a similar way.

2) Reciprocal bilateral coordination is when the right and left side move in opposite rhythmic motion, such as crawling, then later to walk.  As a child refines this skill they can learn to climb steps, to run then to pedal a trike.  A leading hand or foot may become apparent at this stage.

3) Asymmetrical bilateral coordination, this is when both sides of the body are doing something different but working together to achieve a complex task. For example, pouring water into a cup, or holding a jar and unscrewing the lid. Between age 4 and 6 children can manage these tasks efficiently and continue to improve once they have established a dominant hand and helper hand.

What’s crossing the midline about?

You may have heard about ‘crossing the midline’. What is this? There is an imaginary line dividing the left and right sides of the body. An exaggerated example of crossing midline is drawing a very large rainbow on a blackboard with one hand, in one movement.  If efficient bilateral integration has not fully developed, a child may start to draw the rainbow with their left hand, then stop at midline and swap to draw the other side with their right hand.

To be able to carry out self-care, get dressed, and learn to read and write without difficulty, a child needs to have an established dominant hand and be able to cross their midline. For a child to spontaneously and comfortably cross their midline, they require sufficient core stability and balance. Having a consistent dominant hand and a helping, or supportive hand is very important, that way each hand becomes specialised in the skill required. From this basis more complex fine motor skills can develop.

Help with hand dominance is a common referral reason for Occupational Therapists. For more information about our services, please contact reception on 9274 7062.

Madeline Minehan

Occupational Therapist

28 Feb 2019

BY: admin

Occupational Therapist Team

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Depth perception in early childhood

As part of an occupational therapy assessment, basic visual skills such as depth perception are assessed along with coordination of the body.

One of the most significant senses your child uses to learn about the world around them is their vision. Depth perception is one visual skill allowing us to see our world in three dimensions. Up until 6 months of age, everything appears flat, your child’s eyes are not yet efficiently working together.

By about age 6 months, ‘binocular’ vision starts to develop, both eyes start working together more efficiently to help children to see the world in 3 dimensions. Babies are learning all about this when they drop something from their high chair on purpose and watch it fall onto the floor. Development of depth perception, or binocular vision, helps your child learn to gain confidence in their body. We want children to learn to crawl then walk, climb up and down stairs, throw and catch a ball.

Signs of depth perception difficulties

Difficulties with depth perception can easily be missed at a young age.  Some typical signs that children may appear to be delayed include the following:

– Low confidence in gross motor development;

-A late crawler and walker;

-Hesitancy or fear with uneven surfaces, curbs, or slopes; and

-Resistance, or fear going up or down stairs.

Depth perception difficulties can influence a child’s confidence interacting with other children too.  For example they may have difficulty climbing play ground equipment, navigating an obstacle course, riding a trike. Problems may be very subtle and not picked up until a child is expected to learn letters and write their name.

What to do if you think your child needs help?

Some children may be slower to develop efficient depth perception, it may be part of a bigger picture as they may also have gross motor challenges as well. Occupational therapy looks at improving coordination of the whole body, including basic motor skills of the eyes. If there is further assessment and intervention needed for vision, an OT may refer to a Behavioural Optometrist.

Please call reception on 9274 7062  for further information about our services.

Madeline Minehan

Occupational Therapist

26 Feb 2019

BY: admin

Speech Pathologist

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Helping children answer questions

Asking your child questions is important as it helps them learn.   When a child is asked something they don’t know they need to be shown how to answer it. If you do not show the child they will not know what is expected of them. Simply asking more of the same question isn’t the solution.

Helping children answer questions

There are some techniques we can use to help child answer questions. Let’s look at the following strategies. When asking Jay questions remember the following;

1.Start by asking the question and answering it yourself so Jay can hear the answer. For example:

Parent- I wonder what else we could use to help?

Parent – We could use a ladder.

2.Give lots of information about the answer. For example:

Parent – A ladder would be good because we can climb it.

Parent – He could use the ladder to climb up the tree.

3.Try and demonstrate the answer where possible. Try to use physical prompts. For example mime climbing a ladder.

4.Try and give the child the answer before you ask them the question. For example:

Parent – He is sad so he ran away.

Parent  – Why did he run away?

Child – Because he was sad.

Always remember to wait after asking a questions. Some children need time to process the questions and to work out an answer. As a rule after asking the question WAIT 10 seconds.

How to start teaching questions?

Each day chose one of the following questions to focus on:

  • What is it?
  • Where is __________?
  • Who is that?
  • What do/did you see?
  • What did/can you hear?

Think of some activities/times during the day when you can ask your child these questions. Remember to gain your child’s attention first before practising. And (as above) remember to give your child time to answer the question for you.

Lastly – don’t forget to have fun and praise your child for their efforts! This shouldn’t feel like hard work as a parent and children need lots of praise when they start to learn any new skill.

Needing help?

When all else fails, you are more than welcome to consult any of the speech pathologists in the Centre. Early childhhod teachers are also a good source of knowledge and support.

Please feel free to contact reception on 9274 7062 for further information about our services.

Georgina Klimaitis

Speech Pathologist

19 Feb 2019

BY: admin

ABACAS Team

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Escape is not an option!

For some children performing a particular skill may be challenging for them, which often leads to problem behaviours. Therefore, it is important to determine the functions of the behaviour. Behaviours may include: attention, tangible, sensory, and escape.

What does escape look like?

Today, we are going to focus on escape. Typically, a child will try to “escape” whenever the demand that is placed upon them is too much or when the task is too difficult for them. This behaviour may look like: running away, crying, shouting, placing their heads onto the table, “shutting down” (or refusing to respond), throwing things off the table, and hitting.

For a child who has difficulty expressing himself/herself, these behaviours are just a means for them to communicate to us that they are not able to perform the task.

What can we do when a child’s behaviour is about escape?

With children who are non-verbal or partially verbal, the first step might be to look at teaching them functional communication.  For example: handing over the ‘help’ compic whenever they require assistance with something. Obviously we need to also teach to the skill deficit. In other words, teach them the skill they cannot do.

For younger children, we would usually prioritise learning to learn skills. Instead of telling them to “sit down” and “behave”, we will focus on skills such as eye contact, sitting still on the mat/chair, manding (requesting), joint attention, matching, etc. Without these skills, a child will not be able to attend to new information as they are being presented to them. Nor are they ready to learn new skills.

For higher functioning children, we still need to identify the skills that needs teaching. However it may look very different to a younger child’s needs. The skills needed may be more of a social skills. Some children find social interaction really challenging. Therefore we might look at skills like maintaining eye contact, respecting other people’s personal space, knowing when it is appropriate to interrupt a conversation, how to interrupt a conversation appropriately, reading another person’s body language, understanding other people’s emotions, recalling past events, staying on topic, etc.

By stepping back and looking at the function of the behaviour, we can gain insight into what supports the child needs. From there its about breaking down a difficult task into small achievable steps via task analysis.  At the end of the day we want our children to develop competency across the range of skills needed in daily life.

Please feel free to contact myself or Jasmine Fyfe on 9274 7062 for further information on how we can help your child.

Rachel Puan

Assistant Program Manager, ABACAS

https://www.childwellbeingcentre.net.au/services/aba-child-and-adolescent-services-abacas/

18 Feb 2019

BY: admin

Speech Pathologist

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Tips on increasing your child’s vocabulary

As children learn to speak, they need  to expand their vocabulary. Children need to learn the meaning of new words and to able to use them appropriately. A lot of this work occurs naturally for a child. They learn through hearing adults (and older siblings) talk around and to them. However there are ways of communicating as a parent  that are more likely to help children learn than others.

Increasing your child’s vocabulary

Let’s start by talking about what your child is interested in! If we try to talk to your child about doing the laundry – they won’t be interested or motivated to tune in to what you say! However you might see a different response when talking about dinosaurs, making fairies fly, and jumping around the house.

Use play time with your child to help their language. This can be challenging but also very rewarding.  During this play you want to ensure you are playing with what your child wants to play with, and how they want to play with it. To illustrate,  if they want to play with cars, great! If they want to make the cars fly like spaceships – great lets do that! Try not to insist that the cars drive on the road in the ‘proper’ way – let your child lead the way!  From here we use the child’s natural language and expand on it.

If your child is able to speak – repeat what they say, and add to it!  For example a child says “It’s a monkey” we can repeat this but add something new to build their vocabulary e.g. “Look it’s a big monkey! It’s a big silly monkey!” Don’t forget to speak in  an animated way, emphasising the key words, slowing down your speech, and repeating yourself.

The 4 S’s of vocabulary building

Say Less- limit your what you say. Yes your child may understand you if you say “Look the blue car is going down to big slide and then let’s move this car under the big brown bridge!”. However, they cannot imitate this. Provide this information to your child in sections that they can try to imitate e.g. “the blue car goes down!”

Stress – emphasise the key words you want your child to learn! E.g. “The blue car goes down!”

Go Slow – Slow down your rate of speech!

Show – demonstrate what you are talking about – if you say “the blue car goes down” – make sure the blue car does go down the slide!

Repeat! Repeat! Repeat! Everything you say – say it more than once! Repetition is the key to your child listening and taking in what you are saying!

Seeking help

Remember – you are not going to be able to change your communication style overnight – it’s going to take time and practice. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t speak to your child in this way every minute of the day. Set aside time to practice each time and focus on your communication.

Consulting a speech pathologist may also be helpful if you’re feeling worried about your child’s language development. Please contact reception for more information about the speech pathology service we provide on 9274 7062.

Georgina Klimaitis

Speech Pathologist

Strategies adapted from The Hannen Centre.

14 Feb 2019

BY: admin

Occupational Therapist Team

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What do Occupational Therapists do?

This year we are starting a series of posts around the occupational therapy services in our Centre. While Occupational Therapists work with adults, they also work with children and adolescents too.

What do Occupational Therapists do?

Occupational therapy helps a person become more independent carrying out every day activities. These activities include self care, work and leisure. For children, school is their “work” activity, but so is play! Play is an opportunity to practise the activities of life, including social interaction and problem solving.

How can Occupational Therapy help my child?

Occupational therapy can help children in a number of ways:

– It can help children to achieve developmental milestones involving coordination and fine motor skills.

– Give children strategies to improve skills such as getting dressed, eating, using a pencil, scissors and cutlery.

– Help parents and assist children to understand their body and sensory system and how it influences everything they do.

Occupational therapy very much works from a partnership model. That is, the OT, family and child working together to identify goals and learn new ways of doing things. Occupational therapists are also able to work with school based staff to develop strategies to support school aged children in the classroom.

At the Child Wellbeing Centre our Occupational Therapists work with young children, primary and secondary students.

Currently OT is available one Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the Centre. Please call reception for more information about our services on 9274 7062.

 

Madeline Minehan

Occupational Therapist

 

Toilet Training 12 Feb 2019

BY: admin

ABACAS Team

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Toilet training children and ABA

Some children ‘just get it’ when it comes to toilet training. Others, not so much. Toilet training is a huge developmental milestone. It increases independence, helps social relationships and it can be a really important skill when thinking about school readiness. For those young ones who aren’t having success with conventional methods of toilet training ABA can help.

Let’s look at the example of “Johnny” (not his real name!). He’s been engaged in therapy for about a year, responds well to reinforcement, is making lots of gains in his program.  However he’s about to go into Kindy and has been unsuccessful in his toilet training attempts with his parents so far. Johnny’s mum approaches her ABA Program Manager about this skill and they develop a program to toilet train him. Within three weeks he goes from zero toilet use to independent requests for the toilet for both wee’s and poo’s!

How did we toilet train?

There are a few key area’s that need to be addressed in toilet training. First, you need to be able to “catch a wee”. This then gives you the opportunity to reinforce weeing in the toilet. Second, you need to teach the sensation of a full bladder and teach this as a natural antecedent to Mand (request) the toilet. Third, fine motor skills for pulling up and down pants are important if the child’s toilet use is going to be independent.

In a typical toilet training intervention, we will work on all of these skills through a very intensive program. This will include taking the child to the toilet regularly and providing reinforcement, then thinning out the schedule and increasing teaching opportunities to request independently.

In summary, ABA can help toilet train almost anyone! This case reflects the success of a young child, but these methods can be implemented with a child of any age, both younger and older.

When thinking about toileting interventions, your practitioner will need to get medical clearance from your GP first. They will need to rule out any underlying medical problems that may be causing toileting problems.  The next step is to meet the parents/carers and talk through strategies and to explain any risks and the realistic time commitments before you begin. An intensive intervention around toileting can be hard work…but very rewarding too!

Please feel free to contact Rachel Puan or myself should you want to know more about our toileting interventions on 9274 7062.

Jasmin Fyfe

Program Manager ABACAS

https://www.childwellbeingcentre.net.au/services/aba-child-and-adolescent-services-abacas/

06 Feb 2019

BY: admin

ABACAS Team

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Understanding why children avoid homework

Many parents find getting their children to do homework challenging.  For some children school = work and  home = fun. Some children will question the fairness: “But mum, I’ve spent 6 and a half hours at school doing work. Why do I have to do school work at home too?” Others may feel that they simply have better things to do and resist your efforts. In these instances you may need to simply stand your ground, set good routines in place and practice patience!

For some children though other factors  may be at play that impact on them being willing or able to do their homework. Just three to start with:

  • The level of homework that is given to your child may be too difficult.
  • Your child is physically and mentally tired after a long day at school.
  • Your child is feeling stressed by homework and their own internal need for it to be “perfect”.

How then do we tackle such behaviours?

First and foremost, we have to determine the function of behaviour. In other words, why does the child not want to do their homework. Was the task too difficult? Does it have something to do with a skill deficit (e.g. the child simply can’t do it)?

Some of the things that we can look into include:

  • Breaking down the work into small achievable steps (learning to deal with money require other skills such as coin recognition, addition and subtraction, coin value – more and less, etc.).
  • Place small demands (10 minutes of homework before play time and increase expectation slowly).
  • Have strong reinforcers in place (if the child sits down and does 10 minutes of homework for a week, he gets to pick a fun activity to do over the weekend).
  • Communicate with the child’s teacher to see they are able to provide homework that is catered to their current level.
  • Sit down and spend time with your child. Your attention may be more valuable than anything else.

For our some children the underlying issue may be straightforward. For others, it may be more complex hence the need to work through barriers.

For children in our ABACAS program, your program manager is there to help work through these issues with you. They can sit with you an objectively have a look at what is happening and work with you to put some steps in place to ease the transition back into a positive homework routine.

Rachel Puan

Assistant Program Manager

 

05 Feb 2019

BY: admin

Speech Pathologist

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5 tips for language development

Children learn language by watching and listening to others. As a baby your child listens to your voice and tries to copy you with all those lovely babbling sounds.  From 6 months onward, some of those sounds begin to sound like words (e.g. dada and baba). Then from 9 months onward, you’ll see your child start to recognise words (e.g. no, ouch, ta and bye-bye) and they will find ways to tell you what they want (e.g. raise their arms to be picked up). Use of individual words can start anywhere from 12 to 15 months. This is the exciting phase when children start to develop a vocabulary of words to let you know their needs (e.g. juice, doll and doggie).

As a parent you play an important role in helping your child develop their early language skills!

How can parents help?

Taken from The Hanen Centre, the following are some tips to help guide your child’s language development.

1.Use many different kinds of words when talking with your child.

2. Make a point of highlighting a variety of word types when talking to your child, not just the names of things. It is important for your child to learn a variety of word types in order to talk in short sentences.

3. Emphasize action words (sleep, eat, run, push, squeeze, break), descriptive words (soft, hot, big, sticky, funny, tired), location words (up, down, in, on, under), words about belonging (my, your, his, Mommy’s), and feeling words (sad, sick, happy, angry), as well nouns or names of things (dog, book, bed, cup).

4. Repeat these words often and make them stand out when you use them by exaggerating your intonation and slowing down a bit. For example, “Mommy is very… TIRED (yawn). I must go to bed because I need to have a good sleep. Then I won’t be so tired.”

5. Talk about your  child’s natural interests (e.g. their favourite toy) with them. For example, if your child says “ball”, you can extend this with something like “yes, that’s your big, red ball!”.

Where to go for help?

Children can struggle with language development for a range of reasons. A conversation with a child health nurse, GP or early childhood teacher may be helpful in providing reassurance or pointing you in the right direction. Consulting a speech pathologist for advice may also be helpful as they are able to let you know if there is anything to be concerned about and if there is a need for therapy.

The Centre has three speech pathologists available who work on different days of the week. Please call reception on 9274 7062 for more information about our speech pathology services.

Georgina Klimaitis and Naomi Ward

Child Wellbeing Centre

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