What Bobby found hard:
The person who referred Bobby told us that he was not using as many words as he should for his age. They said he was only using 15 single words and that he did not link words together into little sentences.
Assessing Bobby:
The therapist watched Bobby playing with toys at the health centre. She watched him playing at nursery.
She found out:
- How well Bobby paid attention and listened
- How much Bobby understood
- What kind of things Bobby said
- How he interacted with other people
- How he played
What we talked about with his parents:
The therapist found out that Bobby was making progress with his talking. He had lots of new words. He had started joining words together into little sentences e.g. go play ball. She told his parents what she had found out. She told them that he did not need to come for Speech and Language Therapy because he was making progress. She said that Bobby could be discharged. She told them to refer again if he was not putting three words together by the age of 3.
What we advised:
The therapist advised Bobby’s parents to model lots of single words for Bobby. She asked them to do this by saying the names of things that Bobby was interested in. She said this so that Bobby could learn what things are called.
- She asked them not to ask Bobby lots of questions e.g. “what’s this?”, “What’s that?”
- She asked them to help Bobby start linking more words together by doing, “Match and Stretch” – If Bobby said a single word they had to repeat it back and add another word e.g. Bobby said “Teddy” and Mum said “Big teddy”
What happened next:
Bobby was discharged. His episode of care was over. His parents knew how to help Bobby. He could come and see us again if they were worried.