Optimism is a gift, but resilience is home grown. Contributing writer Sarah Mattison Buhl explores how to develop resilience in ourselves and our children.
This month in “The Good Life: A Year of Thoughtful Seasons,” Sarah explores what it means to be independent in a sea of opposition, reflecting on the bravery of her father as he navigates life without language.
Apps that Increase Children’s Vocabulary I once had a teen client who had the most amazing ideas and insights. He was one of those kids who really cared about people and thought about things deeply. I always considered it a gift to work with him. So why did he need speech and language services? Unfortunately, he had a very small repertoire of vocabulary words and he couldn’t access the very reading material… Read More
Narratives: What did you do today? Have you ever tried to find out about your children’s daily experiences? Well, of course, teenagers rarely want to share their day with an adult, but younger children do. For some kids this is one of the hardest things to do. Why is that? It seems like such a simple thing to do! Well, let’s think about it. Telling a story pulls all kinds of language… Read More
Five Speech and Language Games for Travel Since it’s summer and lots of families are on the move, I wanted to suggest a few language games to parents that support the development of language and reading skills. Why language games? I think of children playing games like I think of baby animals playing. It all looks like lots of fun, but built into language play are skills for survival and success in… Read More
It’s ALL Mom’s Fault My thirteen year old, Gannan, is a blame contortionist. Lately when something isn’t right, no matter his actions, no matter his mistakes, he very adeptly twists, turns and wrings it into something that I did wrong. Take last night for instance, he was hungry. (Not an unusual occurrence. Teenage boys’ stomachs are colossal chasms.) Gannan: What can I eat mom? Me: Well there’s goulash left over. There’s potato… Read More
When in Rome … At 9:00 in the morning in the middle of teaching my fifth graders a spelling lesson, I had a revelation that would change the way I parented forever. As with many discoveries that are eye-opening and cataclysmic, this one started from a seemingly banal conversation about the frustrations of parenting. It was on this very morning that my colleague burst into my classroom and announced, “Great news! Timmy… Read More