Cindy Harrison is a speech language pathologist practicing in Ottawa, Canada. Cindy’s area of clinical focus is the assessment and intervention for children/youth and young adults with autism spectrum disorder and developmental disabilities. Cindy is also senior faculty with Profectum, a not for profit training institute that specializes in training clinicians in DIR/Floortime.

1. Welcome to Exceptional Lives’ Kitchen
Conversations!
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2. Kitchen Conversation, Summer Style:
Supporting mental health during summer fun
Presented by Exceptional Lives with
Cindy Harrison, M.Sc. Reg. CASLPO
Speech Language Pathologist
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3. Housekeeping
● Recording
● Your audio
● Q&A function
● Chat function
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4. Exceptional Lives
We envision a world in which families raising
children with disabilities become effective
advocates for their children because they are
informed about and able to access the public
resources and benefits they need to help their
children thrive.
We walk you through disability-related
processes in language you understand.
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6. Tips and Tricks to Facilitate Communication at
Home with your Child
•There are many “every day”opportunities to help your child
develop communication
•You can make “every day” opportunities into learning
opportunities
•With so many of us working from home during COVID-19 the
pressures on parents are significant
•Be kind to yourself – it is a difficult balance
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7. Make favourite items inaccessible
•Put highly desired or motivating items on high shelves, on a counter that your
child can’t reach
•I will sometimes recommend using double sided Velcro tape and mount clear
Ziploc freezer bags with favourite toys or items in the clear bags up high
•This will encourage your child to reach, to point, to vocalize or to verbalize to to
request their favourite items
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8. Create the need for help!
•Create the need for assistance
•Prompt them and then wait for them to respond
•For children who are more verbal you can model for them
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9. Take Advantage of Every Day “Teachable”
Moments
• Ask your speech language pathologist to identify target words
or concepts for everyday activities
• Demonstrate: you are standing between your child and the
the way they want to go out. The concept of “out” becomes
clear quickly!
• Weave your target concepts into activities
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10. Choices, choices, choices!
•Offer your child something you know he doesn’t like. Model “no”, “yuck” etc.
•Offer something you know they like along with something that they don’t like. They
might answer you with a gesture (pointing), a vocalization (“ah ah”), a word “cookie!”
or a word approximation (“use” for juice)
•For children who don’t look at you often try to hold the choices up near your face to
encourage them to look at you
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11. Give small portions!
• At snack time or mealtime give small portions of a desired food (a few sips of juice
or a few pieces of pasta” and model “more?”
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12. Modelling
• Interpret what your child is trying to say
• Label what your child is trying to communicate.
• Expand on what your child says.
• If your child gives an approximation (oos for
juice) model the word back correctly “Juice!”
instead of saying “not oos – say juice!”
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13. In Closing
•Be kind to yourself
•By weaving these tips and tricks into every day life you’ll be doing more than you think to help your child’s
speech, language and communication to develop!
•Please feel free to reach out to me with questions at charrison@actlearningcentre.ca (centre is spelled the
Canadian way with a tre on the end of centre)
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14. Q&A
Please use the Q&A function on the bottom bar on your screen.
We will follow up by email for any questions we can’t answer today.
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15. Thank you for joining us for Kitchen Conversations
Keep an eye on your inbox and on our website for information about
upcoming sessions and other resources.
Watch videos from earlier Kitchen Conversations:
Videos are captioned in English and Spanish
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