Reading aloud with your child is one of the best ways to grow their listening and talking skills, vocabulary, and preparing them for being a successful reader. Education Coordinator a Becky Clem, shows how daily book reading can help your child with hearing loss grow their literacy skills.

Becky Clem, MA, CCC-SLP, LSLS, Cert. AVT, is the Education Coordinator for Rehabilitation Services. As a speech-language pathologist and listening-spoken language specialist (LSLS) with auditory verbal therapy certification, she is passionate about working with children with hearing loss and their families. She works to advance professional skills and education, mentor professionals towards LSLS certification, and supports family-centered care initiatives. She serves on the coordinating committee for SIG 9 on hearing and hearing disorders in childhood for the American Speech and Hearing Association. She presents at conferences at national and international levels and writes for publication on pediatric hearing loss intervention.

Previously she served on the AG Bell Certification Council. As a member of the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss she mentors in the summer teacher-training program in Vietnam. Her publications appear in the ASHA Perspectives, Volta Review, Pediatric Audiology Case Studies (Flexer and Madell, 2010) and Auditory-Verbal Therapy (Estabrooks, 2016). She presents at state, national, and international conferences. When not working, Becky adores reading, cooking, yoga, TCU football, and most of all time with her husband Keith, their two adult daughters, and one-year old granddaughter.

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00:10

Hi, my name is Becky Clem, and I'm the Rehab Services Education Coordinator at Cook Children's Medical Center. Reading aloud with your child is one of the very, very best ways to grow their listening and talking skills, vocabulary, and preparing them for being a successful reader. So how can you help your child with hearing loss grow their literacy skills through daily book reading?

00:35

One way is to pick out books that are related to recent experiences. For example, if you take your child to the zoo, you could pick out Dear Zoo, Good Night Gorilla, Curious George Goes To The Zoo, any of those zoo related books, and then read and talk about that. You can also take pictures at the zoo and put them together in a digital book on your phone, or on the iPad, or hardcopy and then tell the story of you and your child going to the zoo.

01:06

Another one is to read familiar stories, or rhymes, so that they hear information in repeatable, predictable ways. When they hear rhyming words, it's important to lay the foundation for phonemic awareness and reading.

01:21

One of the ways that's fun for children when reading books is to change your voices in the story. For example, in the book, The Napping House, by Audrey Wood, everyone's falling asleep at the beginning. So we would want to use a sleepy voice. The napping house, there is a house, a napping house, where everyone is sleeping. And in that house, there is a bed, a cozy bed, in a napping house, where everyone is sleeping.

02:00

Later on in the b...

Temper tantrums are stressful, especially when you’re out in public, like shopping or at a social or family gathering. Cook Children’s pediatrician and mom, Dr. Christina Sherrod, has some tips to help you manage your child’s meltdown.

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00:00

So what a lot of us worry about as parents is, what do we do when a child has a temper tantrum and we're in public? Like we're at the grocery store, we're at a birthday party, or we're at grandma and grandpa's house and there's a whole bunch of people there. I think you want to be respectful of your child, and try to get them away from an audience.

00:28

So if you're at the grocery store, and you're checking out and your kid sees that Snicker bar, and they want the Snicker bar, and you say no, and they decide to lay on the floor, and kick and scream, what you really, the best thing to do is to pick them up, and take them to the car calmly, not with a lot of mad emotion being non-verbally communicated, but very calmly, pick them up, kindly take them to the car, and let them calm down in the car. And then you can talk about it.

00:57

You don't want to give them the candy bar, which is easier said than done. I can admit, as a parent, sometimes you really just want to get things done, and you don't want to deal with the temper tantrum. And it might be tempting. And we may not even think about it, but we may just give them the candy bar because that's what we want to do at the moment. But try not to do that because it just teaches them that they're going to get what they want.

01:18

Same thing like at birthday parties and big crowds and gatherings, you know, toddlers get extremely overstimulated at those types of things. And it is, it is the perfect setup for temper tantrums because not only is there a lot of things that they might want that they really can't have, or they have to wait their turn and they don't like that. They're tired. Sometimes they're eating candy and not getting nutritious food. So just make sure that you think about and plan your time. Don't...

Ah, the dreaded temper tantrum. They’re no fun, but they are a normal part of childhood, and parenting. Cook Children’s pediatrician and mom, Christina Sherrod, M.D., shares why kids have tantrums, when they’ll outgrow them, and what to do when your child is having one.

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Transcript

00:10

If your child is having tantrums, the first thing to know is that it is a very normal part of childhood and you have a normal child. They usually start when a kid turns one, and peak up until about the age of four. But tantrums are pretty normal and a regular part of childhood up until age seven.

00:31

The first thing to learn when your child is having a temper tantrum is nothing about your child. The first thing to think about is how you're going to respond. And that it's really important as a parent, that you stay calm, because your child is going to read and act based off of how you respond.

00:46

And I think the thing to realize about tantrums is that your child is just overwhelmed with emotions. And you can't make that go away for them. Your job as a parent is to help them learn how to handle those very strong emotions.

01:04

You can't yell at them and get those emotions to stop. Often, that makes it worse. You can't spank them to get those emotions to stop and you can't punish them. What you really need to do is let them ride that ride. Give them a calm, safe environment to learn how to calm down. And then, once they're calmed down, try to talk to them about it. And how you talk to them about it really depends on how old they are.

So an 18 month old can't really understand long sentences, but they will have tantrums when they're tired, when they're hungry. And they'll definitely have tantrums when you don't give them what they want.

01:39

All of those are instances where their emotions are just overwhelming them. And they're screaming and crying and hitting and kicking. And what you want to do is, first set really good boundaries that they are not allowed to hit or kick or hurt anyone else when they're having a tantrum. If they do that, you tell them no, and you put them in timeout.

01:58

If they're just kicking the floor, and not hurting themselves and screaming and crying, then you really just want to give them a minute. You just want to keep yourself calm. Try not to say anything, and let them just get to a place where they're out of that part of their brain that is illogical, and not hearing you and not understanding what you're saying.

And then when they calm down, that's when you say, "Man, you were so upset because I wouldn't give you the remote control. I know that made you mad, b...