I meet children with the most fantastically varied interests. Their delight in details has taught me a lot about play and exploration. I always aim to follow a child’s lead within speech and language therapy sessions, to find the thing that inspires a child to communicate. Over time, I’ve learned that this often means abandoning my own plans and my shiny new toys in favour of the door jam, the lid of a cardboard box and oh so much more.

So, when parents ask me ‘What toys shall I buy to build attention’ my response is always ‘What is your child interested in?’ Because supporting attention, communication and interaction isn’t about buying a prescribed set of toys. More often, it’s about putting down the toys and paying attention to the details of what your marvellous unique kiddo wants to explore with you.

What surprising things does your child delight in exploring? For starters, there’s always the good ol’ cardboard box.

PS. I have put together a list of gift suggestions, if you’re looking for a few more ideas.

This strategy is my number one go-to piece of advice and approach to my therapy sessions. It sounds incredibly simple, so much that we often dismiss it. But when we really dig into the many ways that we can follow a child’s lead, tune in and build on their ideas, then we’re in a much better position to support their learning.

Simple right?! Maybe not. The trick is to notice when we’re trying to direct, advise or change the play. Often we have an existing picture in our head of how the train track should be laid down, or how the stacking cups should nest together. It can be quite hard to slow down and watch how a child discovers different ways of playing with what’s available.

Being child-led in your play together supports a child’s attention, their motivation to stay in the play and their ability to learn new words. And this is because you’re able to give them the words that are really relevant to what they’re interested in.

Here’s to embracing the unexpected and learning together from what children have to show us.

Here’s 3 important lessons I’ve learned from the children I work with.

In the last couple weeks, prompted by the terrible murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others, people across the world have been protesting and speaking up against ongoing racism and injustice.

As someone who walks through the world in a white body I know I can never understand what it’s like to experience everyday racism and the inequalities baked into our systems.

I’ve been spending a lot of time listening and reading. And I want to hear more, I want to understand better and continue the lifelong practice of being anti-racist.

One of the very small actions that I’ve been taking is to be braver in everyday conversations with the people around me. We need to be willing to dig into tricky conversations about race and privilege and the many emotions that go with that.

As a Speech and Language Therapist I’m always encouraging children to step outside their comfort zone and practice the communication skills that they find tricky. It feels a good time for us all to be practising the same.

I’d like to share with you some of the things that I bear in mind for any important conversation.

1) Listen more than you speak. Approach the conversation with the aim to better understand, rather than to educate or convince.

2) Focus on ‘I’ sentences instead of ‘you’ sentences. This helps you communicate your ideas, without judgement or accusation.

3) Feel it in your body. When we attend to how our body is feeling, it helps us to formulate and articulate our own thoughts and feelings about a topic. When a conversation makes you feel uncomfortable that’s often a valuable clue that these are important topics worth grappling with.

3) Be patient. These are conversations we need to have for a long time. This isn’t about a quick correction, it’s an ongoing discussion.

4) Practice out loud and be willing to get in wrong. It’s easy to stay silent for fear of getting something wrong. But engaging in these conversations is too important to avoid.

I’m committed to having more conversations, so that I can learn and make a positive contribution. And I’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to share your perspective or signpost to other resources, please feel free to add to the comments below.

Honestly, it feels a little strange to make any attempt at responding to the global situation right now. I say global because it’s that interconnected, shared experience that has most struck me about all of this. As we all talk about the changes in our everyday routines, I see how much we have in common. We share so many of the same fears, hopes, challenges and unexpected joys.

At home, our top window looks across to our small stretch of sea, the Solent. My dad, a keen sailor, commented recently how the sea reminds him of that connectedness across the globe. I feel particularly grateful to have this sea view in these days of sheltering in place.

As a Speech and Language Therapist, the changes to our everyday make me think about how we communicate. But it’s bigger than communication. It’s about how we respond to each other and care for our community.

If you subscribe to my monthly newsletter you’ll be familiar with the Communication Tree model. But, in this video I propose a different model of communication development; one that considers why we bother with all this stuff in the first place.

You can download the Communication Tree model by subscribing below. Watch out for more posts in the weeks to come, as we learn to navigate the new rhythms of our days.