Language Disorders in Teenagers/Adolescence
Once a child has reached all language development milestones of early childhood SLP\'s should be aware of advance language development and how to help those struggling in middle and high school academics. More »
Language Disorders in Teenagers or Adolescence
In early childhood, a therapist would evaluate whether the child is moving along through the levels of development appropriately. The main questions would be whether the child is building language and moving from level 1 through level 4. Once a child has moved into level 4 language development and evolves into adolescence the question turns towards development of advance language skills. In adolescence, it is important to evaluate lexicon and how it is developing to determine if they are reaching or at the end of the oral literate continuum. The characteristics of literate lexicon would be inference skills to gather information from the context that accompanies it. This skill is important for unraveling the meaning of nouns for technical and curriculum purposes. Other skills they should possess at this stage are the use of verbs that involve metacognitive skills and metalinguistic skills. They should be using verbs that involve theory of mind and perspective, this eventually helping them to take on the perspective of others. Other advanced language skills include ease of word retrieval, ability to produce definitions, generate alternative words from a single word given, produce figurative language and integrate complex ideas. Clinicians would look at the student’s ability to organize, predict, speculate, and hypothesize with their academic study subjects. Lacking any of these skills could pose a great challenge for middle school and high school students.
A student’s ability to advance in science, mathematics, literature, history, and geography would likely suffer without these important skills. Their writings skills would suffer without the ability to gather information or unravel the meaning of words in more advance ways. Sadly, in the culture of middle and high school the ability to understand perspectives of others could manifest in their social skills. Lack of these skills would also hinder the creation of personal relationships. The often emotionally charged click group ruled environment of middle and high schools makes having any noticeable difference from the masses miserable at best. Generally, differences of any kind are not embraced and being singled out for therapy is often uncomfortable and met with resistance. Therapy and tutoring can help give delayed students the extra help they need to develop these skills, but the way therapy is presented to the student is important. An unwilling student will have a difficult time making progress, or may even make it impossible.
Making therapy fun and exciting is important and having a social play on therapy could make the difference of success or failure. Group therapy with peers would likely help students to understand they are not alone with their delay. They could practice scenario acting, reading tasks that involve further discussion and problem solving together which will foster relationships. A small group where everyone understood the environment to be one that is safe and confidential would be the ideal situation. Many games could be created using themed scenarios for metalinguistic and metacognitive skills.
Gluten Free Egg Noodles
Gluten free egg noodles
Update: I have found this whole process to be pretty forgiving. Feel free to alter it the way you want. In the end you should come out with the same product as if using flour with gluten (using this type of flour). I made a larger batch at one time and found after adding water by the tsp., letting it mix good, then adding more as needed yielded great noodles.
This makes a small batch of noodles. I made it twice to feed my family of 6 and it allowed for each to have approximately a 1 cup serving. You can buy a number of different cup for cup gluten free flour at the stores these days. The brand that I used is called “Cup 4 Cup” and is a mixture of white rice flour, brown rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, and xanthan gum. I bought this at the grocery store and paid around $12.00 for a 3lb bag. You can definitely make your own mixture and have found plenty of recipes to do so by using Google. Here is one that I was going to make then realized “Cup 4 Cup” was nearly the same ingredients and I already had it in the cupboard. http://frugalfarmwife.com/article/gluten-free-flour-mix.
4 egg yokes
2 tsp oil (I used olive oil)
2 tsp water
Pinch of salt
1 cup of gluten free flour mix
First mix the yokes, oil, water, and salt. Secondly, add the flour a bit at a time until you have a formed dough ball. I used my kitchen aid mixer with the dough attachment; however, for many years I did not have such utensils so doing it by hand would work just as well. I did add a teaspoon of water as needed! I believe it was about 2-3 tsp. Basically the goal is to get a smooth formed ball so make sure to mix it good before adding extra liquid. If you are doing it by hand, once you get the liquids mixed in with the flour I suggest you use your hands. This will ensure that everything is being mixed together. Use a bit of flour or butter on your hands to keep it all from sticking to you. Lastly, on a lightly floured surface roll out your dough and cut. I use a pizza cutter which makes the job quick. I let my noodles dry for a couple hours. This may or may not be necessary. I have read that many other people just boil right away. Happy cooking!
Beef and Homemade Gluten Free Noodles
Easiest Banana/Pumpkin Bread Recipe
This morning I taught my daughter Morgan how to make the easiest but most delicious banana and pumpkin bread. These are super simple ingredients and very easily adjusted to individual taste!
Ingredients
½ cup butter, softened — (you can use margarine but I prefer butter)
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ – 2 cups mashed banana
2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Directions
1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour on 9×5 inch pan.
2.) Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs, then bananas. Add Flour and soda, stirring just until combined.
3.) Pour into prepared pan and bake for about 1 hour (or until toothpick comes out clean). Remove from pan and let cool, store in refrigerator or freeze.
In order to make pumpkin bread I substituted bananas for a can of pumpkin. I also added plenty of cinnamon and pumpkin spice. You can mash just about any kind of fruit or vegetable and use the basic recipe for delicious results! Please feel free to post the changes or additions you create, we would love to read about them!