6th January 2023 - Issue #1

The Speech Sound Clinic Weekly Newsletter!

Welcome to our new weekly Newsletter!

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Let's hope 2023 is a happy and healthy one for everyone.

Well done on making it through the first week of 2023, it was a slow one to start, but I for one, am happy to be back in a routine and some weekly structure!

Now it's time to reset and refocus our goals for the weeks, months and year ahead.

And as this is my first newsletter, I am ticking off my first goal of 2023. My goal is to create and email weekly newsletters, create more blogs and build a community.

So for my first newsletter, here are my 3 learning moments from the past week:

#1 Reset and Refocus

I'm not one for New Years Resolutions, but I do love making short term, achievable plans and committing to do them. This can be signing up for a new course to develop my professional knowledge (I've enrolled in an AAC and Gestalt Language Processing course in February) or signing up for an organised cycle or hike to keep my personal fitness training going ... accountability is so important for my professional and personal development.

A parent emailed me on January 1st with her 2 goals for this term for her son, who recently started using an AAC device. It got me thinking how important it is to reset and refocus the goals that we have for our children in therapy, both in the clinic/school and most importantly at home.

Read my newest blog, where I discuss this in a little more detail and why it's important to review these goals on a regular basis.

Read Here

#2 Build New Habits

I've been reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, it's a fantastic read if you want to learn how we can make small changes in our daily lives to build new habits.

Everyday in the clinic or in my schools, I have the conversation with caregivers, parents and teachers about how we can make changes to the way that we model or present language so that we are helping our children reach their potential. This could be achieved by something as 'simple' as reducing the amount of questions we ask in a day or reducing the language load in an instruction. That involves changing our habits and behaviour. We should always be thinking, as parents/educators/therapists, how we can create new habits and teachable moments across the whole day.

#3 New Podcast Listen

This week, to get my brain back into work mode, I re listened to an old episode of Two Sides of the Spectrum podcast. In this episode AAC specialist Kate McLaughlin hosts a Q&A about all things AAC - from grid size, to device selection, to autonomy and authenticity in how we view and approach AAC.