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Fort Myers OT Insight: “How Can I Help My Child With Eye Contact?”
A child may avoid eye contact for a number of reasons, but it’s something to really pay attention to because it’s one of the earliest indicators of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Infants who avoid eye contact with their parents – something that can be observed in a baby as young as 3 months – need to carefully monitored and assessed if the problem persists. Most babies start making eye contact no later than 6 months of age. If this is something you’ve noticed, it’s imperative to talk to your pediatrician about a potential referral for ADOS testing. If you already know your child is on the spectrum and is struggling socially, our Fort Myers OT (occupational therapy) team has some strategies that may help improve eye contact.
When Should My Baby Be Making Eye Contact?
Babies start using eye gaze to regulate behavior at around 5-6 months of age. By around 7-9 months, they use eye gaze to initiate joint attention. Joint attention is when a person purposefully coordinates his/her focus of attention with that of another person. In other words, two people are intentionally paying attention to the same thing for social reasons. If you say to your child, “Look at that big ball,” and the child looks to where you have pointed to see the ball. You’ve just engaged in joint attention. Kids on the autism spectrum struggle with joint attention, as it’s considered a social skill. Difficulty with joint attention can lead to or at least be closely correlated with developmental language delays.
As our Fort Myers OT professionals can explain, most toddlers will pair eye contact with their gestures at least half the time when they’re communicating. When kids struggle to pair their gestures or words with an eye gaze, it could be a red flag. For a child with social-communication deficits, consider that it can be really difficult to listen to someone talk, understand what they are saying and look at them at the same time.
Even as they get older, kids with autism may be apprehensive about establishing eye contact because they don’t have the ability to communicate. Some kids on the spectrum require a great deal of concentration to make and sustain eye contact. It’s important for parents not to force their kids to have eye contact, as this could result in frustration and anxiety. Instead, there are tactics we as occupational therapists can use in sessions and teach you for carryover.
Fort Myers OT Tips for Encouraging Eye Contact
With patience, positivity, and encouragement, you can help your child make and maintain eye contact. It can be difficult at first, but know that working on this skill is something that is not only going to help them in the short term, but long term when it comes to making friends and succeeding throughout life.
Four Things to Know About Developmental Language Delay in Kids
Some kids are “language late bloomers.” A percentage will catch up to children their same age on their own. Others, however, will continue to struggle with language learning. We call this a developmental language delay. If these difficulties persist beyond the earlier stages of development (past the age of 5), it can significantly impact their reading, writing, math, reasoning, and social skills later on.
Kids whose language troubles can’t be explained by some other cause (such as a disability, syndrome or physical impediment) and continue until they’re in school are typically diagnosed with Developmental Language Disorder.
Some indications of a language delay may include:
- Not babbling by 15 months.
- Not speaking by the age of 2.
- Inability to speak in short sentences by the age of 3.
- Trouble following directions.
- Difficulty putting words together in a sentence.
- Leaving words out of sentences.
If you suspect your child may be struggling with language comprehension or expression, you do not need to wait until they are school age to have it addressed. In fact, you should have it assessed and treated much sooner, if possible. As noted by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA), early intervention (before age 5 and preferably before age 3) can have a substantial impact on the long-term implications of a speech-language disorder or developmental language disorder.
Our early intervention speech therapy team at FOCUS Therapy can help your child struggling with language skills to catch up to their same-age peers, specifically targeting skills like:
- Cognitive thinking (problem-solving, thinking, learning).
- Communication (listening, talking, understanding, gesturing).
- Physical/sensory skills (seeing, hearing, crawling, walking, climbing).
- Social-emotional skills (playing, understanding feelings, making friends).
- Adaptive/self-help skills (eating, drinking, bathing, dressing, etc.).
If you think your child may need some extra help in the area of language development, here are four things to know:
Fort Myers Speech Therapist Tips on Reducing Kids’ Screen Time
Kids’ recreational screen time more than doubled in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent study by the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics. This is concerning news because, as a Fort Myers speech therapist will tell you, excessive use of screen time can have numerous adverse impacts. In particular, these include:
- Unhealthy weight gain.
- Reduction in social skills.
- Depression.
- Delay in speech-language development (particularly for younger children).
The researchers looked at a group of more than 5,400 kids. Their average daily screen time prior to the pandemic was about 3.8 hours (still pretty high!). (The data was initially gleaned to study how cognitive development is impacted by screen time.) Then during the pandemic, kids’ use of electronic screens doubled to 7.7 hours daily. It should be noted that figure excluded school-related screen time, which many kids engaged in on-and-off, either in virtual school or some hybrid. Here in Southwest Florida, many schoolchildren are also assigned a set number of weekly minutes through a reading-math program called iReady. This too would have been excluded.
Analysts were solely looking at recreational screen time. That would include the use of electronic devices (phones, iPads, gaming systems, etc.) for things like:
- Multiple-player gaming.
- Single-player gaming.
- Texting.
- Social media.
- Video chatting.
- Browsing the internet.
- Watching streaming movies, videos, or television shows.
FOCUS POCUS Trunk-or-Treat at FOCUS Therapy is Tonight!
FOCUS Therapy families are invited to join us TONIGHT for the 2nd annual FOCUS POCUS Trunk-or-Treat event! We’ll be in the parking lot at our Colonial Boulevard location (4997 Royal Gulf Circle, Fort Myers) from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Bring your brothers, sisters, and best buddies & see all your favorite FOCUS Therapy staffers, therapists, and friends for a frightfully fun time! We’ll have games, prizes, decked-out trunks, trick-or-treat & more! Can’t wait to see all your boo-tiful faces!
Why Early Intervention Speech Therapy is SO Important if Your Child is Delayed
Speech and language skills are critical to a child’s ability to learn and interact in the world around them. When speech-language delays are identified and treated right away, there are exponential benefits for their social-emotional and academic growth. The early years are the most important for building strong speech and language skills. In this stage, your child’s brain is growing extremely fast in the first five years of life. During this window, kids are more open to learning than they’ll ever. To minimize the long-term negative impacts of a speech-language delay or disorder, our Fort Myers speech therapy team recommends early intervention – starting before age 3, if possible.
Communication is one of the most critical developmental tasks of early childhood development. It’s the way children start to form their understanding of the world. When a child has trouble communicating (being understood and/or understanding others), it can hinder their ability and confidence to express their ideas and observations of the world around them.
Kids who struggle with communication in earlier stages of development may struggle with:
- Low frustration tolerance.
- Emotional outbursts.
- Excessive shyness.
They may also appear less academically advanced than their peers. That’s because reading, writing, and verbal assertions are essential to the learning process. The foundation for these skills starts very early – from birth. Your child may be too young yet for school, but if you notice they aren’t on pace with their peers in terms of speech and language skills, it’s a good idea to act promptly. The sooner you can address it, the less chance they’ll fall too far behind academically.
Also by the time kids get to school, their speech and language delays or difficulties may become markedly obvious, sometimes even to them. This realization can be a blow to their confidence, leading to lower class participation and performance. The earlier they can start working on it with a licensed speech-language pathologist (SLP), the less the deficit is going to impact them later on.
A child’s inability to express themselves or understand what’s being expressed to them has an undeniable negative impact on their ability to fully enjoy and participate in daily life. The earlier we can intervene with speech therapy, the less difficulty they’ll have as they get older.
Boost Child Development While Playing in Nature
As the weather cools in Southwest Florida, it’s the perfect time to get outside and play with your child! It’s not just about enjoying the day and making some memories (though these are worth it in itself). Our speech, occupational, physical, and ABA therapists know that spending time outdoors is great way to boost child development.
Being in nature has been proven to boost kids’ academic achievement, physical health, mental health, and overall well-being. One analysis of hundreds of studies on the subject found that nature boosts learning in eight distinct ways. Those include:
- Improves attention.
- Relieves stress.
- Boosts self-discipline.
- Increases physical activity and fitness.
- Promotes self-motivation.
- Increases enjoyment.
- Improves engagement.
As pediatric therapists dedicated to helping disabilities and delays make strides, we have found that nature provides a calmer, quieter, and safer setting for learning. It can also help with:
- Motor skills
- Communication
- Social-emotional skills
- Speech and language skills
- Executive function
- Sensory integration
- Relaxation and emotional regulation
Spending time outdoors creates opportunity for more creative, exploratory forms of play – and play is how children learn best!
Fort Myers Speech Therapy Insight: Strategies We Use to Help Your Child Talk
Our Fort Myers speech therapy team has many strategies to help children learn important speech and language skills.
So much of it is creating opportunities and encouraging practice in a fun, play-based atmosphere. Some examples include:
- Putting things just out of reach, to encourage the child to ask for it.
- Provide only part of a game to play with, and encourage them to ask for other pieces.
- Pretend to be forgetful. Let the child “catch us” being forgetful or getting an answer wrong – the love to be helpful so we can get it right!
- Pause during an activity that is predictable. It could be singing a favorite song or game and just pause. This encourages them to retrieve and use their vocabulary.
FOCUS Therapy Hosting 2nd Annual FOCUS POCUS Trunk-or-Treat!
Join us! Thursday, Oct. 28th from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at our Colonial Boulevard location for our 2nd Annual FOCUS POCUS Trunk-or-Treat! Wear your most spook-tacular costumes and see all your favorite FOCUS Therapy staffers and therapists for games, prizes, and trick-or-treat! We can’t wait to see all your boo-tiful faces!
Zip It! Occupational Therapy Tips on Learning to Button & Zip
Learning to get dressed is an essential function of independence. But none of us is born learning to tie, button, or zip. For kids with developmental delays and disabilities, these skills can take longer. Our FOCUS Fort Myers occupational therapy team can help.
Developmental Progression of Buttoning and Zipping
Every child develops at a different pace, so there are no hard-and-fast rules for when a child should be able to master buttoning and zipping. That said, some general milestone guidelines are:
1.5-2 years:
- Can unzip zippers with large tabs.
- Can pull a large zipper tab up if an adult holds the bottom of it tight.
2 years:
- Can unbutton large buttons (1 inch or more).
2.5-3 years:
- Can button 3 large buttons, though they may not do so in the right order.
2.5-3.5 years:
- Can unzip and unsnap clothing while wearing it.
3-4.5 years:
- Is able to close the front snap on clothing.
- Can button and unbutton while wearing front-opening clothing.
4.5-5 years:
- Opens all the fasteners on any piece of clothing.
5-6 years:
- Can hook and zip up on their own.
5 to 6 years:
- Can hook and zip up on their own while wearing the clothing.
Physical Therapy Exercises for Babies With Down Syndrome
For children with Down syndrome, physical activity and exercise can be inherently more challenging. However, our Fort Myers physical therapy team members recognize the huge role that exercise can play in reducing – and in some cases substantially improving – the many adverse health conditions associated with Down syndrome. Ultimately, exercise can boost a child’s functional ability, which helps them to be more independent.
But why start with babies? Because we already know that children with Down syndrome are going to have certain physical challenges. For instance, many have poor muscle tone (formally known as hypotonia). Some parents will describe this as the quality of being “sort of floppy,” and you’ll notice early on, they have trouble keeping up their neck or controlling their head for any significant stretch – even when other kids their age have mastered this. The earlier we start working on things like core strength, flexibility, and gross motor skills, the more progress they’ll make and the less difficult it’s going to be for them later on.
That said, it’s very important that you only start these exercises with your child after checking with your physical therapy provider and/or pediatrician. Some activities may need to be tailored to meet your child’s specific needs and abilities.