Saturdays News - The Teaching of Talking

The ability to speak and be understood is often taken for granted.  We know that when we open our mouth, the words will surface and be expressed.  Words are essential in human relationships. We learn, interact, love and work through the use of words.

What happens to the life of a child whose speech does not develop properly?  What happens to people who lose the ability to speak because of a stroke or brain injury?

This book is about helping children who have not developed speech or adults who have lost the ability to speak.  It focuses on teaching you, the reader, how to use techniques I have spent 40 years developing to help your loved one cultivate or regain the ability to speak.  For the speech language pathologist who is reading this book, it will help you become more effective in your approach to helping people talk.

If I could sum this book up in a few paragraphs, it would be this:

• You will learn how to help people talk again.  The method will be conversational in nature.  That means you will help the person recover the ability to speak as you TALK with them using words at their level.  
• You will learn how to step into their world, speak about what really lights them up, and begin showing them how to expand what they are saying from single words, to two-word combinations, then phrases and eventually complete sentences.  What is best about this method is the lack of “homework.”  
• Your therapy consists of stimulating them to talk all through the day in whatever activities you are doing.  What could be more enjoyable?

This book was written with the family member, caregiver or speech pathologist in mind.  It does not include a lot of theory.  You will be stimulating talking at home, where speech is first learned; and the one who will be modeling correct speech and language will be someone who loves or cares for the person who has difficulty speaking.  Do you see the simplicity in that?