Rehabilitation Specialists, Inc.

Hello again! I am very happy for our next installment of our “5 Questions With…” series on this blog (second one in a row!) Today, we will be discussing five questions with Dr. Sarah Wallace, one of my wonderful professors from Duquesne University. To me, she is the absolute expert on aphasia, alternative and augmentative communication, and research in the field of speech and language pathology (only partly because she taught all of those classes to me). To introduce my guest, I will be pulling directly from Duquesne University’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic’s website: Sarah E. Wallace, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is the Program Director for the Adult Language and Cognition Clinic and Associate Professor in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology. Dr. Wallace received her B.Ed. from Miami of Ohio University, M.A. from Western Michigan and her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her clinical, research, and teaching interests include assessment and interventions for adults with n...

Just a quick note from me (Kathleen) before getting into our blog post for this week! Julie finally has some time in her schedule to write some blog posts on the clinical subjects she is passionate about as well. For her first post, we are welcome our audiology professor from Duquesne University for our second installment of "5 Questions With..." to discuss hearing screenings. Please read on to find out why this 5 minute screening test is so important! It’s that time of year again! Ya know, when your child comes home with a paper that says the school nurse, a speech therapist, or if you’re super lucky, an audiologist is coming to screen the kids for hearing. Personally, I always dreaded hearing screening day at school, especially in high school. Growing up, I had at least 6 tubes in my ears as a kid and plenty of visits to the doctor for chronic ear infections, which I still get, even at 30. I was that weird kid at pool parties who couldn’t go underwater (still ...

If you have ever sung a childhood rhyme or read a Dr. Seuss book, you recognize that rhyming is a big part of children’s lives. But why? Rhyming is a really hard concept to explain. Luckily, most kids pick up on it from these sources intuitively, but many children do not. I used to explain that rhyming words sound the same at the end. But then why don’t bed and nab rhyme? So, I explain that they sound the same in the middle and end of the word. Well, what about two syllable rhymes? Seven and eleven rhyme, even though one is 2 syllables and one is 3, but seven and dozen do not. Rhyming is so complex because it is a higher-level phonological awareness skill. Phonological awareness is explained as the rules of sounds and an ability to manipulate sounds. This includes a child being able to identify sounds and words, be able to identify the number of sounds or syllables in words, blend sounds and syllables, change/add/delete a sound in a word to create a new word, and rhyming. Phono...

Something I have not been able to do as much as I had before I had children is reading. I love being transported to new worlds but more so, I love learning new things. I have always preferred non-fiction. My favorite author is Malcolm Gladwell, teaching us social issues and tiny minutia of life that actually has huge impacts. Because of my love for learning new things and tiny things that actually have a huge impact, I love learning about the brain. Perhaps it is part of why I became a speech therapist. This weekend, my husband and I actually went on a date and we chose to just chill out at the library. I was able to relax with a book on the brain called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat . This book reminds me a lot of my favorite book on neurology, Phantoms In The Brain . These books talk about how important certain areas of our brain are in everyday functions that we don’t even realize are important until they are damaged in some way. One of the first stories in The Man Who ...

For today’s blog, I really wanted to take a moment to talk about how to get your child to answer your questions. What do I mean by this? Well, I mean decreasing the instances of you asking your preschooler a question and they just stare at you, so you repeat and repeat with no response in the end. What I also mean is eliminating you asking your school-age child, “How was school?” and only hearing “Good.” If you are reading this and thinking, “Wow, I really could benefit from this” or even if you’re thinking, “I’m afraid my child still wouldn’t answer” because of delays or language disabilities, please read on because I will also explain both scenarios. So, to first talk about how to get a conversation going, we first need to talk about how to listen to our children, not just prompt them. You may be saying, “Of course I listen to my children”; but, do you wait long enough to get the whole answer? Some children may only need 1 second to respond to a question; some may need 5 seconds. Th...