Articles
Evidence-based articles and practical tips to support your child's communication, language, literacy, and feeding development.
After the Year 1 Phonics Check: What to Do Next at Home
After the phonics check: start with the teacher, a few minutes a day on decoding, what not to do, keeping sound games going and when an assessment helps.
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Reading Your Child's Year 1 Phonics Check Results: What They Mean
What the Phonics Check measures and what it doesn't, why half the words are made up, what 28 out of 40 means and when a low score needs a closer look.
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Watching Bluey with Your Child: Conversation Starters and Language Tips
Pause and talk, name the feelings, predict then check, retell afterwards, then play the games for real. Bluey episode picks by language goal, kept low-key.
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Why Bluey Is a Speech Pathologist's Dream: Language Lessons from Bluey
Why Bluey models the play, feelings talk and back-and-forth that build language, what the show gets right, and what it cannot do on its own.
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Building Communication Skills Before School Starts: Strategies for Parents
Conversation games, directions in daily routines, retelling stories and turn-taking on play dates: everyday ways to build talking skills before Prep.
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Is My Child Ready for Prep? A Communication and Language Checklist
What listening, talking, storytelling and social skills look like in the year before Prep in Queensland, plus a word on hearing and when to assess early.
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Making Screen Time Work for Your Child's Language: Practical Tips
Choosing content that leaves room for talk, watching together, turning watch time into talk time, and why video calls with Grandma are the exception.
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Screen Time and Language Development: What the Research Actually Says
Screen time, content and company all matter for language. Background TV, why toddlers don't learn from video, the Australian limits, and why AAC isn't screen time.
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Supporting a Child with Selective Mutism: Strategies for Home and School
Taking the pressure off talking, responding to every kind of communication, stimulus fading in plain words and how to build a plan with the school.
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What Is Selective Mutism? Understanding This Anxiety-Based Communication Difference
Selective mutism is anxiety, not refusal. How it shows up at kindy and school, its overlap with language and autism, and how we assess without pressure.
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Supporting Your Child After a Tongue Tie Release: What Comes Next
After a tongue tie release: what recovery looks like, whether feeding improves, why speech won't fix itself and when a hearing or speech check is worth it.
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Tongue Tie in Children: Facts and Myths Every Parent Should Know
Tongue tie rarely affects speech, but it can affect feeding. What the rise in frenotomy means, who should assess, and what to ask before a release.
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Speech Therapy: When to Follow and When to Lead
When to follow a child's lead and when to step in. Which skills suit which approach, how to use the blend at home, and what to watch for in sessions.
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Child-Led vs Clinician-Led Therapy Explained
Child-led or clinician-led? Where each sits on Fey's continuum of naturalness, which goals suit each, and why most good therapy blends the two.
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Phonological Awareness Activities: A Parent Guide
Clapping games, rhyme hunts and sound-spotting: phonological awareness activities by age, from three-year-old syllables to Prep phonemes.
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What Is Phonological Awareness? Pre-Reading Skills
Phonological awareness moves from words to syllables to rhyme to single sounds. The order, the rough ages, and what to listen for at home.
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Teaching Concepts About Print: Parent Strategies
Pointing to words as you read, talking about letters and the gaps between them: how print referencing during shared reading builds print awareness.
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Concepts About Print: Essential Pre-Reading Skills
Holding the book the right way, reading left to right, knowing print carries meaning: the print concepts children pick up before they read a word.
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Supporting Bilingual Children with Disabilities
Assessing and treating a bilingual child with a disability: look at every language, use dynamic assessment, and separate the disability from bilingualism.
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Bilingual Language Learning and Disability
Told to 'just speak English' because your child has a disability? What studies of Down syndrome, DLD and autism say about keeping the home language.
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The Simple View of Reading in Australian Schools
Where the Simple View of Reading shows up in the Australian Curriculum, the shift to structured literacy, and questions worth asking your child's school.
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The Simple View of Reading: How Children Learn
Reading comprehension = decoding x language comprehension. The four reader profiles from the Simple View of Reading and what each one needs.
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Neuro-Affirming Language in Practice: A Guide
Better words for talking about neurodivergent children, in reports, goals, sessions and at home, with sections for professionals and for families.
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What Is Neuro-Affirming Language? A Parent Guide
Where neuro-affirming language came from, why 'autistic child' and 'child with autism' are not the same choice, and how wording shapes a child's self-view.
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Speech Sound Therapy: Assessment and What Helps
What happens in a speech sound assessment, how minimal pairs and phonological awareness work in therapy, and how to help at home without correcting.
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My 6-Year-Old Is Hard to Understand: Speech Delays
'Cat' as 'tat', 'rabbit' as 'wabbit': which patterns should be gone by six, why these are the hopeful kind, and when to book an assessment.
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Parent-Delivered Speech Therapy: Home Practice
Which speech and language skills to practise at home, how to fold them into meals, car trips and bath time, and how to keep it fun rather than a drill.
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Why Parents Are Key in Speech Therapy
Parents see far more of their child than any therapist does. Why that makes you such a key part of therapy, and what it asks of you.
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How Bridging Therapy Works: Practical Approaches
What a bridging therapy session looks like at home or kindy, how interpreters and bilingual co-workers fit in, and how to keep every language strong.
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Bridging Therapy for Bilingual Children
Why therapy for a bilingual child should use the home language too, following Kohnert: pre-teaching concepts, bridging to English, coaching parents.
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Reducing Cognitive Load: Strategies for Learning
Simpler instructions, less clutter, careful scaffolding: how to cut the mental load on a child who is learning, and how to spot overload and adjust.
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Cognitive Load in Speech Therapy: Why It Matters
Cognitive load theory in plain terms: the three kinds of load, how overload looks in a session, and how to find the Goldilocks zone for a child's learning.
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Helping Children Follow Directions: Strategies
What to do when a child needs every instruction repeated: get attention first, shorten the language, add visuals, and play barrier games.
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Concepts and Following Directions: Key Milestones
'Put it inside, not under.' Spatial, time and quantity concepts sit inside every instruction, and gaps in them explain a lot of 'not listening'.
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Why Linguistic Phonics Works: Structured Literacy
What linguistic phonics is, how it differs from other phonics programs, and why it is the approach we use for reading and spelling.
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Phonics and Early Reading: What Parents Need to Know
What synthetic phonics actually teaches, how it sits inside the Australian Curriculum, and what good phonics instruction looks like in class.
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Movement in Speech Therapy: Practical Ideas
Obstacle courses, scavenger hunts and action vocabulary: ways to build movement into speech and language practice while respecting each child's needs.
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Why Movement Matters in Speech Therapy
What embodied cognition, executive function and regulation research says about moving while learning, and why sitting still isn't always best for talking.
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The Truth About Raising Bilingual Children
Code-switching, vocabulary spread across two languages and how to count a bilingual child's words fairly: what typical bilingual development looks like in the research.
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Bilingual Language Learning: Busting the Myths
Does a second language confuse children or delay their talking? Three common bilingual myths, where they come from, and what the evidence shows.
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Matching Speech Therapy Frequency to Your Child
Which goals usually need weekly sessions and which can space out, how block and ongoing therapy differ, and why home practice carries the gains.
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How Often Should My Child Have Speech Therapy?
Dose, frequency and duration explained, with what therapy schedules tend to look like for speech sounds, early language, stuttering and social skills.
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Speech Sound Patterns in Bilingual Children
Accent, transfer and dominance effects are typical; errors that fit neither language or low intelligibility in both are not. How to tell them apart.
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Bilingual Children and Speech Sounds: What's Typical
An accent is not a speech disorder. How two sound systems develop side by side, what cross-linguistic transfer looks like, and when to get an assessment.
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Supporting a Child with DLD at School: Strategies
What helps a child with DLD: chunked instructions, visuals and pre-taught vocabulary at school, talk and reading at home, and a team that works together.
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Developmental Language Disorder (DLD): A Guide
DLD affects about two children in an average classroom. What it looks like in instructions, discussion, reading and friendships, and why it is so often missed.
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Building Narrative Microstructure: Strategies
Conjunction games, retelling together and watching verb tense: how to strengthen the sentence-level skills that hold a child's story together.
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Narrative Microstructure: Blocks of Storytelling
Conjunctions, pronouns that refer back clearly, consistent tense and words like 'then': the sentence-level glue that makes a child's story easy to follow.
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Therapy for Childhood Apraxia: NDP3, ReST and DTTC
Therapy for inconsistent speech and childhood apraxia: why the two need different approaches, core vocabulary, and the motor programs NDP3, ReST and DTTC.
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Inconsistent Speech and Childhood Apraxia Explained
When a child says the same word three different ways: what inconsistent speech is, how it differs from childhood apraxia, and how assessment tells them apart.
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Building Concepts Across Two Languages: Strategies
Narrating routines in your home language, real objects, photos and gesture: ways to build concepts across two languages at home and in sessions.
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Bilingual Concept Development: What to Target
A child may learn 'under' in Vietnamese and meet the English word years later. How concepts cross languages and which ones therapy should target.
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How Speech Pathologists Use Play in Sessions
A walk through a play-based session from setup to wrap-up, how the same game changes for language, speech-sound and social goals, and what to try at home.
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Play and Speech Therapy: Why Play Is Serious
Play is how young children learn language, so a speech pathologist plans it on purpose. What that looks like and why it isn't a lesser approach.
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Therapy for Atypical Speech Sound Errors
Therapy for consistent atypical speech errors: contrast-based phonological therapy, why core vocabulary suits a different profile, and what to expect.
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Atypical Speech Sound Errors in Children Explained
Backing, dropped first sounds and favourite-sound substitutions: the speech errors that are not on any developmental timeline, and why they need targeted help.
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How Speech Sound Errors Affect Reading and Learning
A child who still says 'tat' for 'cat' may also struggle to spell it. Why speech sound errors show up in phonics, spelling and reading fluency.
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Phonological Speech Patterns vs Articulation Explained
Articulation or phonological? The two can sound alike at the kitchen table but call for different therapy. How to tell which one your child has.
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The SOS Approach to Feeding: How It Helps Kids
What the SOS Approach to Feeding is, what the research does and does not yet show, and how we use it at home with children who find eating hard.
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Fussy Eater or Problem Feeder? The Difference
Fussy eater or problem feeder? A side-by-side look at food range, mealtime stress and sensory signs, plus the point at which it's worth getting help.
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Shared Reading: Language Modelling with Books
Comment, expand, link to life: how to model language with Dear Zoo, Brown Bear, Where Is the Green Sheep? and We're Going on a Bear Hunt.
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The Power of Shared Reading for Language
What shared reading does for vocabulary, storytelling and comprehension, why the talk around the book matters most, and what to do if your child won't sit.
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Social Communication Strategies for Autistic Kids
Visual supports, social stories, video modelling and interest-led play: what each one is for and when it helps an autistic child with social communication.
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Pragmatic Language and Autism: An Affirming Guide
What pragmatic language means for an autistic child, why different is not wrong, and how support can build understanding rather than teach masking.
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Teaching Sentence Structure: Practical Strategies
Expansion, extension and recasting in everyday talk, plus Shape Coding and Colourful Semantics when a child needs sentence structure made explicit.
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Simple and Complex Sentences: A Parent Guide
Simple, compound and complex sentences: the ages children typically reach each one and why 'because' and 'although' matter for school writing.
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How to Teach Tier Two Vocabulary: Key Strategies
Choose the word, give a child-friendly definition, use it in rich contexts, come back to it often. A practical method for teaching Tier Two words.
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What Are Tier Two Words? Vocabulary Explained
Tier Two words like 'fortunate' and 'compare' carry most school reading. Beck's three-tier framework and why these words need explicit teaching.
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Helping Children Tell Better Stories: Strategies
Story maps at the kitchen table, bedtime retells and visible story grammar during shared reading: ways to help a child tell a clearer story.
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Narrative Macrostructure: Story Grammar Explained
Setting, character, problem, plan, attempt, resolution: story grammar explained, with the ages at which children usually manage each element.
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Classroom Speech Therapy Strategies for Teachers
Visual supports, pre-taught vocabulary, shorter instructions and story scaffolds: classroom moves teachers can start using this week.
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Teachers and Speech Pathologists: Why It Matters
Why the hour a week in therapy only sticks when the teacher is on board, and how parents can help the two professionals share goals.
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How to Use Aided Language Stimulation at Home
How to model on your child's AAC system during ordinary routines like meals and bath time, without turning every moment into a test or waiting for a reply.
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What Is Aided Language Stimulation? A Parent Guide
Aided language stimulation means talking on your child's AAC system while you speak. What it is, why modelling matters, and how to start with a few words.
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Activities to Build Vocabulary Depth in Children
Sorting games, odd-one-out, narrating play and describing daily routines: everyday activities that build category, verb and describing-word knowledge.
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Building Rich Vocabulary: Categories, Verbs, Describers
Knowing 'dog' is one thing; knowing it's an animal that barks and can be fluffy is depth. Why categories, verbs and describing words matter.
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When to Worry About Babbling: Signs to Watch For
No canonical babbling by 10 months, few consonants, a very quiet baby or sounds that stop: what each can mean and what a baby assessment involves.
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Babbling: What It Is and How to Encourage It
From cooing to jargon, the five stages of babbling with rough ages, why babbling predicts later talking, and simple ways to encourage it every day.
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How to Help a Late Talker: Evidence-Based Tips
Follow, comment, expand: the Hanen-based habits that help a late talker, what a toddler language assessment involves, and what happens afterwards.
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Late Talkers: When to Worry About Toddler Speech
How many words should a toddler have at 18 and 24 months? The milestones, the signs worth a conversation, and the problem with 'wait and see'.
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Supporting a Gestalt Language Learner at Home
Three things to do at home when your child learns language in chunks: treat echolalia as communication, model easy-to-borrow phrases, follow their lead.
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What Is Gestalt Language Processing? A Parent Guide
Does your child repeat whole lines from shows instead of single words? What gestalt language processing means, Blanc's proposed NLA stages, and what the evidence says.
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Supporting a Child Who Stutters: Home and School
What to do when your child stutters: listening without finishing sentences, how classrooms can adapt oral tasks, and what therapy involves at this age.
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Stuttering in Primary School: What Parents Need
Stuttering in Years 3 to 5 looks different from preschool: how it shows up in reading aloud, discussions and friendships, and what we know about causes.
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Supporting High-Level Language in Teenagers
What to do when a teenager's language can't keep up with high school: ideas for home, classroom adjustments, and what teen therapy involves.
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High-Level Language Difficulties in Teenagers
Your teenager reads fine but misses the point of the text. Inferencing, figurative language and persuasive writing explained, and the signs to look for.
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Choosing the Right Communication Access Method
How an access assessment works step by step, the seating, vision and preference factors that shape the choice, and how the NDIS can fund the equipment.
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Alternative Access for Communication: A Guide
Eye gaze, switches, partner-assisted scanning and head tracking: what each one is, which children they suit, and what an access assessment looks at.
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Getting Started with a Speech Generating Device
Your child has a speech generating device. Now what? Why to model on it, why not to hide pages or symbols, and why patience with yourself matters as much.
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Speech Generating Devices for Children: A Guide
Will a talking device stop my child from talking? What speech generating devices are, what the research says about that worry, and how NDIS funding works.
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Using a Communication Book Every Day: Key Tips
Making a PODD book part of daily life: how to model on it instead of quizzing, which routines to start with, and how to get siblings and peers using it.
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Low-Tech Communication Books and PODD: A Guide
What a PODD book is, how it differs from a folder of pictures, who it suits, and why a paper book can sit alongside a device rather than replace it.
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