New Beginning!

 The past few years have stirred big changes in our lives. Where do I even begin!?

Last I wrote, we were expecting our first little one, who is now a beautiful, sassy, brave girl who is starting kindergarten this fall! She loves and cares for her two (almost 3) little brothers fiercely. We have a 3 year old boy, 18 month old boy, and we are expecting our third boy in September. Needless to say, our days are busy but full of love and laughs (and screams and cries and boo-boos and temper-tantrums). 

Another big change that has happened recently, and the reason I finally have time to get back into blogging, is that I resigned from my job as a Speech-Language Pathologist to be a stay-at-home mom. It is a dream come true. Childcare in our little town is hard to find and expensive. Pairing that with my strong desire to be with my kids and the fact that we are expecting our 4th baby made the choice to resign and stay home pretty simple. I have been home with the kids about 6 weeks now and I am working about 100 times more than I ever did at my 8-5 job. Shout-out to stay at home parents! You work harder than most and are rock stars!

A few other smaller things have happened in the past few years. We bought a remote property last year and are enjoying many of our weekends there. It is a small off-grid cabin on the ocean. My husband and dad spent a large part of last summer fixing up the cabin to make it more comfortable (wiring the cabin with electricity from our generator, plumbing the water catchment system to the kitchen and bathroom, fixing up the front porch, and giving it a new paint job inside and out). It continues to have ongoing projects, but it is turning into a great place to escape the hustle and bustle of Wrangell. 😆

So, for now, I am taking a new direction with this blog. I want this page to be a resource for parents to use to enhance speech and language development. I plan to give ideas for easy home "therapy" activities, tips for using daily activities to encourage communication, and answer questions that you have. 

This past week I asked my Facebook friends what burning questions they have about speech and language development and one question that stood out to me was on speech sound development: "How much should strangers be able to understand my 3 year old?"

Let me introduce you to the concept of familiar and unfamiliar listeners. Familiar listeners are people who hear a child talking regularly; they are familiar with their speech patterns and the general context of their communication which makes it easier for them to understand the child's speech. Unfamiliar listeners are strangers or people who are not consistently around your child to hear them talk (i.e., maybe you see a co-worker at the grocery store and they know you and your child but are not around them enough to be familiar with how they communicate). As a parent, you are a familiar listener for your child. You likely can understand WAY MORE than anyone else and, I am willing to bet, you end up "translating"  your child's speech for unfamiliar listeners. 

As a general rule, to an unfamiliar listener, I say a child's speech is 50% intelligible as a 2 year old, 75% intelligible as a 3 year old, and 90-100% intelligible as a 4 year old. If you are introducing a 3 year old to an unfamiliar listener, that person should be able to understand about 75% of their speech. This sounds like a high number, but in reality you will likely need to translate their speech on 3 out of 4 communications which can feel like a lot and really interrupt the flow of communication. As children age, typically they spontaneously grow out of speech patterns that make their speech difficult to understand but if you feel that strangers are struggling to understand your child more than the percentages I gave, it might be a good idea to talk to your child's provider at their next appointment about your concerns. 

Thanks for reading, commenting, asking and contributing to this blog! Let me know what we should discuss next!