Summer's Journey

Happy new year! It has been six months since the setup of Summer's Therapy Services. Things are starting to pick up and I am feeling more settled. I reflected and looked at where I am today and was thrown back to Year 2000 when I first came to know about the profession of Speech Therapy. In 2000, I was an undergraduate at National University of Singapore (NUS), majoring in Social Work and Psychology. I came across Speech Therapy during one of my Social Work internship in a special school. Since then, I knew that this is where my passion lies. Upon gradation from NUS in 2002, I worked as a therapy assistant at one of the acute hospitals in Singapore. Without the appropriate qualification, being a therapy assistant is the closest thing I could get to being a Speech Therapist, or any allied health professional. That lasted for a year and a half before I was granted a government scholarship to pursue a degree in Speech Therapy in Australia. I graduated in end 2007 and started...

SNIPPET (1) I have always loved how Mum relates with him. She never treats him as a child with Autism. She brought him for cycling from East Coast to Marina Barage on the PCN. She brought him to Taiwan for holiday. She brought him to Christmas Wonderland at Gardens by the Bay. She brought him to Home Team Festival at Singapore Expo. She gives him all the opportunities and experiences a typically-developing boy would have... and more. She gives him her unconditional love. And of course, with this, he grows into a highly-esteemed boy, achieving his potential. This December, he will be having a piano performance during a church service. And I am honoured to be invited. SNIPPET (2) This month I went on a consultation trip in Brunei. I saw three children and made one of them cry... badly... (and I felt really bad even if it was only for three minutes). In a consultation session (especially when overseas), I have little time to build rapport with the child. There are many th...

I would love to share the attached video of Lori Overland, a renowned Speech Therapist who specialises in children's oral motor, feeding and speech difficulties. In my previous post, I mentioned the reasons for the lack of success in oromotor therapy for some children. I also added that in addition to oromotor tools, PROMPT and NDT approaches are often used in my treatment of articulation difficulties (may it be muscle-based difficulties or motor-planning difficulties). This video captures exactly what I am trying to say: Lori Overland (the featured Speech Therapist) assessed Nathan (the featured child) using Talktools and Ark's oromotor tools. She looked into jaw strength and gradation, as well as lip-jaw and tongue-jaw dissociation. She also assessed the child's feeding skills, despite the lack of strong evidence in the link between feeding skills and speech. Lori's feeding assessment showed that Nathan does have feeding problems (his feeding skills are funct...

In this entry, I will share with you why the therapy approaches mentioned in my previous post 'Don't Give Up Mummy!'  did not work for YS. Oromotor Exercises: Often, oromotor exercises with therapy tools have been prescribed to children without a good understanding of the child's difficulties which led to speech problems. There have been quite a lot of commercialized tools that come with thick manuals, instructing us how to use those tools step-by-step for 'speech development'. I love using these tools and they have been very effective in my therapy. However, there is no manual which teaches us how to diagnose each child's difficulty, nor is there a manual which teach us how to transit the oromotor skills to speech. We need professional knowledge and clinical judgement to tease out the specific cause of a child's speech problem and how to transit the oromotor skills to speech. For speech, we have to look at jaw stability, lip dissociation and tong...

Last week, I was sharing with YS' Mummy on how to facilitate language learning in everyday routine. I shared with her the S.P.A.R.K. approach by Hanen TM . She looked at me straight in the eyes and told me flatly that she had undergone the entire Hanen TM  'It Takes Two to Talk' programme and it was not effective at all! ( Prior to this, Daddy had shared with me how YS was talking before she started using Picture Communication System, and how she just lost her speech totally the moment her school placed her on the Picture Communication System a few years back. He also mentioned that YS has been doing oromotor exercises for a long time with little results. ) When Mummy told me outright that what I shared is nothing new and it is totally ineffective, I did not take it to heart at all. In fact, I felt really sad. It added on to the sadness which I was feeling after hearing what Daddy had shared. I asked myself what had gone wrong. YS' parents had tried almost every r...

Happy Teachers' Day to all Educators out there, regardless of whether you are a teacher or a therapist! Being an educator is not a easy journey... but definitely a rewarding one. Like how parents would celebrate every little achievement their child with special needs makes, I celebrate every little achievement that the children I work with make. Two weeks ago, one of my new client's mum told me, "You know, it took me THREE weeks to teach LD to tap my hand to get my attention when requesting for an item!" I thought to myself, "Three weeks is not too bad at all! I have had worked with children who took three months or even longer!" Today, as many educators celebrate Teachers' Day in school, I wish all of you a Happy Teacher's Day. You deserve all the recognition for the hard work which you have put into our children. Of course, not forgetting the LOVE which you have showered on each of them, bringing them to greater heights every day. Happy Tea...

It has been 12 days since my last post on DJ. I had another two sessions with him.  I am excited to share about those two sessions! Because DJ is no longer trying to get off-seat or trying to rush through the tasks.  I changed my approach completely... First, I removed the schedule board. Second, I moved the table aside. It was funny how DJ stretched towards the table to check out the schedule board, to find out what he had to do, but could not even find the board. I simply told him, "Come play with Teacher." He looked at me straight in my eyes and gave a cheeky smile. We played tickle... we played throwing/catching ball... we played blowing a windmill...  we laughed and had fun together... I obtained the rapport again!  Then... I told him, "Let's do work for 5 counts and we can play again!" He looked at me with moderate reluctance and I repeated calmly, "Just 5 counts." He trusted me and know that when teacher said '5 counts', i...