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My new article was published in January 2012 issue of Adoption Today Magazine

My article entitled: Speech Language Strategies for Multisensory Stimulation of Internationally Adopted Children has been published in the January 2012 Issue of Adoption Today Magazine

Summary:  The article introduces the concept of multisensory stimulation and explains its benefits for internationally adopted children of all ages.  It also provides suggestions for parents and professionals on how to implement multisensory strategies in a variety of educational activities in order to stimulate interest, increase task participation as well as facilitate concept retention.

References:

Doman, G & Wilkinson, R (1993) The effects of intense multi-sensory stimulation on coma arousal and recovery. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. 3 (2): 203-212.

Johnson, D. E et al (1992) The health of children adopted from Romania. Journal of the American Medical Association. 268(24): 3446-3450

Ti, K, Shin YH, & White-Traut, RC (2003), Multisensory intervention improves physical growth and illness rates in Korean orphaned newborn infants. Research in Nursing Health.  26 (6): 424-33.

Milev et al (2008) Multisensory Stimulation for Elderly With Dementia: A 24-Week Single-Blind Randomized Controlled Pilot Study. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias. 23 (4): 372-376.

Tarullo, A & Gunnar, M (2006). Child Maltreatment and Developing HPA Axis. Hormones and Behavior 50, 632-639.

White Traut (1999) Developmental Intervention for Preterm Infants Diagnosed with Periventricular Leukomalacia. Research in Nursing Health.  22: 131-143.

White Traut et al (2009) Salivary Cortisol and Behavioral State Responses of Healthy Newborn Infants to Tactile-Only and Multisensory Interventions. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing. 38(1): 22–34

 Resources:

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Speech-Language Activity Suggestions for Multisensory Stimulation of At-Risk Children

In recent years the percentage of “at-risk children” has been steadily increasing across pediatric speech-language pathology caseloads.  These include adopted and foster care children, medically fragile children (e.g., failure to thrive), abused and neglected children, children from low socioeconomic backgrounds or any children who for any reason lack the adequate support system to encourage them to function optimally socially, emotionally, intellectually, or physically.

At times speech-language pathologists encounter barriers when working with this population, which include low motivation, inconsistent knowledge retention, as well as halting or labored progress in therapy.

As a speech-language pathologist whose caseload consists entirely of at-children, I have spent countless of hours on attempting to enhance service delivery for my clients. One method that I have found to be highly effective for greater knowledge retention as well as for increasing the kids’ motivation is incorporating multisensory stimulation in speech and language activities.

To date, a number of studies have described the advantages of multisensory stimulation for various at risk populations. For example, in 2003 a study published in Journal of Research in Nursing and Health described the advantages of multisensory stimulation for 2 week old Korean orphans who received auditory, tactile, and visual stimulation twice a day, 5 days a week, for 4 weeks. This resulted in significantly fewer illnesses as well as significant gains in weight, length and head circumference, after the 4-week intervention period and at 6 months of age. Another 2009 study by White Traut and colleagues published in the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing, found that multi sensory stimulation consisting of auditory, tactile, visual, and vestibular intervention contributed to a reduction of infant stress reactivity (steady decline in cortisol levels).   Moreover, multisensory stimulation is not just beneficial for young children. Other studies found benefits of multisensory stimulation for dementia (Milev et al, 2008) and coma patients (Doman & Wilkinson, 1993), indicating the usefulness of multisensory stimulation for a variety of at risk populations of different age groups.

After reviewing some studies and successfully implementing a number of strategies I wanted to share with you some of my favorite multisensory activities for different age-groups.

Before initiating any activities please remember to obtain parental permissions as well as a clearance from the occupational therapist (if the child is receiving related services), particularly if the child presents with significant sensory issues.  It is also very important to ensure that there are no food allergies, or nutritional restrictions, especially when it comes to working with new and unfamiliar clients on your caseload.

Multisensory stimulation for young children does not have to involve stimulation of all the senses at once. However, there are a number of activities which come quite close, especially when one combines “touch ‘n’ feel” books, musical puzzles as well as paper and edible crafts.

Here’s one of my favorite speech language therapy session activities for children 2-4 years of age. I use a board book called Percival Touch ‘n’ Feel Book to teach insect and animal related vocabulary words as well as talk about adjectives describing textures (furry, smooth, bumpy, sticky, etc).  As I help the children navigate the book, they get to touch the pages and talk about various plant and animals parts such as furry caterpillar dots, shiny flower petals, bumpy frog skin, or sticky spider web.   We also work on appropriately producing multisyllabic words and on combining the words into short sentences, depending of course, on the child’s age, skills, and abilities.   With this activity I often use animal and insect musical puzzles so the children can hear and then imitate select animal and insect noises.

Also, since all of Percival’s friends are garden insects and animals, it’s fairly easy to turn the book characters into paper crafts. Color paper templates are available from free websites such as www.dltk-kids.com, and range in complexity based on the child’s age (e.g., 2+, 3+ etc).  While looking innocuously like simple paper cutouts, in reality these crafts are a linguistic treasure trove and can be used for teaching simple and complex directions (e.g., after you glue the frog’s arm, glue on his foot) as well as prepositional concepts (e.g., glue the eyes on top of the head; glue the mouth below the nose, etc).

So far we have combined the tactile with the auditory and the visual but we are still missing the stimulation of a few other senses such as the olfactory and the gustatory.  For these we need a bit more creativity, and that’s where edible crafts come in (inspired by Janell Cannon’s ‘Crickwing’).  The child and I begin by constructing and gluing together a large paper flower and dabbing it’s petals with various food extracts (almond, vanilla, raspberry, lemon, root beer, banana, cherry, coconut, etc).  Then, using the paper flower as a model, we make an edible flower using various foods.  Pretzel sticks serve as stems, snap peas become leaves while mango, tomato, apple, peach and orange slices can serve as petals.  After our food craft is finished the child (and all other therapy participants) are encouraged to take it apart and eat it.  The edible flower is not just useful to stimulate the visual, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory senses but it also encourages picky eaters to trial new foods with a variety of textures and tastes, as well as serves to develop symbolic play and early abstract thinking skills.

It is also important to emphasize that multisensory activities are not just for younger children; they can be useful for school-age children as well (including middle school and high school aged kids). In the past, I have incorporated multisensory activities into thematic language and vocabulary units for older children (see resources below) while working on the topics such as the senses (e.g., edible tasting plate), nutrition (e.g., edible food pyramid), the human body (e.g., computer games such as whack a bone by anatomy arcade), or even biology (building plant and animal cell structures out of jello and candy). From my personal clinical experience I have noticed that when I utilized the multisensory approach to learning vs. auditory and visual approaches alone (such as paper based or computer based tasks only), the children evidenced greater task participation, were able to understand the material much faster and were still able to recall learned information appropriately several therapy sessions later.

I find multisensory stimulation to be a fun and interactive way to increase the child’s learning potential, decrease stress levels, as well as increase retention of relevant concepts.  Try it and let me know how it works for you!

 References:

·         Doman, G & Wilkinson, R (1993) The effects of intense multi-sensory stimulation on coma arousal and recovery. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. 3 (2): 203-212.

·         Ti, K, Shin YH, & White-Traut, RC (2003), Multisensory intervention improves physical growth and illness rates in Korean orphaned newborn infants. Research in Nursing Health.  26 (6): 424-33.

·         Milev et al (2008) Multisensory Stimulation for Elderly With Dementia: A 24-Week Single-Blind Randomized Controlled Pilot Study. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias. 23 (4): 372-376.

·         Tarullo, A & Gunnar, M (2006). Child Maltreatment and Developing HPA Axis. Hormones and Behavior 50, 632-639.

  • White Traut (1999) Developmental Intervention for Preterm Infants Diagnosed with Periventricular Leukomalacia. Research in Nursing Health.  22: 131-143.

·         White Traut et al (2009) Salivary Cortisol and Behavioral State Responses of Healthy Newborn Infants to Tactile-Only and Multisensory Interventions. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing. 38(1): 22–34

 Resources:

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Dept of Children & Families / NJ Task Force on Child Abuse & Neglect Presentation

 

 

 

 

October 21, 2011: East Brunswick NJ

The Department of Children and Families and the New Jersey Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect  had a  statewide child maltreatment prevention conference today and I had great fun doing today’s presentation:

Differential Diagnosis of Inattention, Hyperactivity and Impulsivity in At-Risk Children” with our clinical team, Alla Gordina, MD, FAAP and Lydia Shifrin, LCSW.

We had a terrific crowd, who asked great questions and gave excellent feedback.

Presentation Highlights:

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is one of the most common and  the most controversial neurobehavioral disorders in children diagnosed today

Core symptoms of ADHD include  Inattention, Impulsivity and Hyperactivity

Some ADHD statistics:

  • Approximately 9.5% or 5.4 million children 4-17 years of age have ever been diagnosed with ADHD, as of 2007.
  • The percentage of children with a parent-reported ADHD diagnosis increased by 22% between 2003 and 2007.
  • Rates of ADHD diagnosis increased an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 and an average of 5.5% per year from 2003 to 2007.
  • Boys (13.2%) were more likely than girls (5.6%) to have ever been diagnosed with ADHD.
  • The highest rates of parent-reported ADHD diagnosis were noted among children covered by Medicaid and multiracial children.

However,  numerous medical, psychiatric, neurological, psychological, speech-language and other disorders are frequently misdiagnosed as ADHD

NEARLY 1 MILLION CHILDREN ARE MISDIAGNOSED WITH ADHD

“Since ADHD is an underlying neurological problem where incidence rates should not change dramatically from one birth date to the next, these results suggest that age relative to peers in class, and the resulting differences in behavior, directly affects a child’s probability of being diagnosed with and treated for ADHD.”  (Elder, 2010). Journal of Health Economics

 

Disorders frequently misdiagnosed as AD/HD :

  • Respiratory Disorders (e.g., adenoid hypertrophy, asthma, allergic rhinitis)
  • Metabolic /Endocrine Disorders (e.g.,  diabetes, hypo/hyperthyroidism)
  • Hematological Disorders  (e.g., anemia)
  • Immunological Disorders (acquired and congenital immune problems)
  • Cardiac Disorders (e.g., congenital and acquired heart disease, syncopy)
  • Digestive  Disorders (e.g., irritable bowel syndrome, GERD, etc)
  • Neurological Disorders  (e.g., Traumatic Brain Injuries, Tumors, Encephalopathy, etc)
  • Sleep Disorders
  • Genetic Disorders (e.g., FASD, Fragile X Syndrome)
  • Toxin Exposure (e.g., Lead, Mercury, Drug Exposure)
  • Infections and Infestations (e.g., yeast overgrowth , intestinal worms/parasites)
  • Mental Health Disorders (e.g., anxiety, mood disorders, adjustment disorders)
  • Mental Retardation
  • Sensory Processing Disorders (vision, hearing, auditory, tactile)
  • Language Processing Disorders
  • Auditory processing Disorders

My presentation focused on explaining that having select language based difficulties can cause the child to act as inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive without actually having ADHD

My examples included:

  • Traumatic Brain Injury
  • Severe Language Delay
  • Auditory Processing Disorders
  • Social Pragmatic Language Deficits

Relevance and Implications for Adoption Professionals:

  • Multidisciplinary approach to identification, differential diagnosis, and management of disorders with “AD/HD” symptoms is NEEDED
  • One individual assessment (e.g.,  psychological) CANNOT reliably determine accurate diagnosis, especially when the diagnostic criteria is based on generalized symptomology
  • Refer adopted children with behavioral, listening, sensory, and any unusual deficits for multidisciplinary assessments which include in depth assessment of language abilities before making a conclusive diagnosis
  • Children who receive one assessment ONLY are at risk of misdiagnosis, misidentification, and are delayed in getting appropriate intervention services
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AAP: Council on Foster Care, Adoption and Kinship Care Presentation

Boston MA- First conference of the Fall 2011 season:

October 17, 2011: Got to co-present with my favorite pediatrician (Alla Gordina, MD, FAAP) an interesting clinical case in front of American Academy Of Pediatrics: Council on Foster Care, Adoption and Kinship Care. Granted my part was via phone and connection wasn’t great but it so nice to see medical professionals being interested in ancillary professionals’ perspective on issues of internationally adopted children.

Presentation Title: A Case of Isolated Social Pragmatic Language Deficits in an Internationally Adopted Child

Presentation Highlights:

Language based deficits may affect internationally adopted children many years post adoption

Even children adopted at very young ages can present with subtle BUT significant delays in select areas of functioning (see below)

One such delay may be in the area of social pragmatic functioning  or the use of language

Select examples of social pragmatic deficits include:

  • Impaired ability to appropriately interpret social situations, events and contexts
  • Impaired ability to create and convey messages to different audiences (adults vs. children)
  • Impaired ability to interpret facial expressions, body language and gestures
  • Difficulty labeling and identifying basic emotions of self and others
  • Poor or absent perspective taking (understanding thoughts and feelings of others)
  • Inappropriate initiation of social interactions (e.g., not knowing how to start a conversation or appropriately interrupt a game)
  • Comprehension of age-level abstract and inferential information (stories, sarcasm, figurative language, etc)
  • Missing “the big picture” (integrating ideas into a whole, synthesizing and summarizing information)
  • Poor connection and relatedness to peers

Implications for Professionals:

Very easy to misdiagnose a child with social pragmatic deficits as someone with psychiatric disturbances (e.g., ADHD or Autism) without multidisciplinary differential diagnosis

“Low risk referrals” do carry a significant risk of deprivation-related issues, which can surface years after adoption

Internationally adopted children with behavioral, listening, sensory, and any unusual deficits need a differential  diagnosis (including assessment of language abilities before a conclusive diagnosis is made)