I've been trying to think of a way to introduce myself properly, and Hanen articles seem like am okay method.
This is what I do; I'm a paediatric speech pathologist and early language development is an area where I do a lot of work. That means that one of the things I do is read a lot about developmental psychology and neurology and disseminate it to parents in ways that are fairly simple to understand.
Fortunately for me, the internet is full of other speechies doing the same thing, so I can often give articles like this one to parents and teachers and spend more time discussing their thoughts, rather than pushing my own.
Sigh. Edited for spelling error. I might be a pro, but I'm a tired pro.
Interesting, but the article doesn't discuss why it is that the theory of mind and language delay issues seem to be interrelated. That is what I am curious about now. Guess I'll be heading down that rabbit hole soon, assuming I can find some articles about it.
It sort of does when it lists some of the areas made difficult by the lack, but you're right, it's definitely not a scholarly article. But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. The ONLY purpose of language is to communicate with our fellow humans. If you're not developing a good understanding of those humans at the same time as you're developing your language skills, problems are going to creep in. I often see it with kids who lack skills in describing and storytelling; if you ask them "What did you do today?" they say "I don't know," but if you say "Did you enjoy playing tennis?" they can manage to tell you a bit about it. It makes therapy tricky because you have to actually outright discuss metacognition with a four year old sometimes and that's hard to do. One of my favourite ways in is Lego or games like "Guess Who". The features some of these kids choose to ask questions about though! I remember one little guy asking "Is your person on the down-low?" That was a long discussion about what another person can and can't be expected to observe and what would be the most efficient way to win the game! Do you have journal access via a university or something? I can definitely hook you up.
I can't get my kid to tell me anything about her day pretty much ever. What did you do today, "nothing." How was camp today, "fine." I was a pretty closed mouth kid who was on my own trip, so I can kind of relate but my inability to find out anything gets frustrating.
Thank you! Gave it a quick read over and will definitely need to do some deeper study with it when I have some time. Noted some terms to look into in my 'external hard drive' - I don't have any journal access through a university. I wonder what I might be able to find with my library.