By Lea Donovan Watson, MS, CCC-SLP, Certified AVT
Global Foundation for Children With Hearing Loss Vietnam Mobile Mission January 2011
An Experience Book is a way for parents and teachers to enrich their child’s language development. Like a scrapbook, this notebook includes concepts which the family wants the child to learn. Start with important people: Mom, Dad, grandparents, and siblings. Next, move to important toys, songs, places that the baby enjoys. Talk to the child at the appropriate language level for that child.. The key is to think, “What does this baby need to know now” and “How can I talk about what this baby need to hear at this point in development?”
In Auditory-verbal Therapy (AVT), children who are deaf and hard of hearing need to learn how to listen and then review what they heard. These scrapbooks provide a way for parent-child interchange.
Be thinking; “I need to help my baby hear. What is most important for the baby to hear? I am patterning this little brain for sound. How do I attract the baby’s attention with my voice?” Sitting close to the baby’s hearing aid or cochlear implant microphone as you talk you are establishing a pattern, a reaction, a style without even thinking about it. Pay attention to sound and expect the baby to respond to what you say.
Auditory-Verbal Therapy advocates an individualized hierarchy of auditory skills for learning to listen. The idea is to help each family implement the Ten Principles of Auditory-Verbal Practice* into their life. In each therapy session, the Auditory-Verbal Therapist makes thoughtful suggestions to the parent regarding the listening and language needs of the child. The parents are encouraged to add drawings or pictures during the week. Review of goals and objectives are right on the table as the baby and parent literally look at and talk about the story of their lives
The delight shared among the child, the parent, and teacher as they examine the book is exciting. “Daddy got a new pair of glasses!” the teacher exclaims as if she has just won the lottery. “Daddy glasses”; the child volunteers and beams with pride.
The mom talks more about the color, size, shape of the glasses, whether or not the child has glasses, mom wears glasses, or the teacher has glasses. The communication connection between the child and adults is charged with delight, magnetism, and auditory expectation.
Talking without lip-reading possible, sitting beside the child or with the mouth hidden either behind the book or with a hand, makes this auditory. The idea is: “auditory information to the brain first” allowing the hearing aids to work most effectively by making sure that was how the brain processed the incoming message. The parent radiates with joy to see their child who was deaf, listening. Expecting the child to listen and learn in this auditory-only way gives the parent and teachers a way to practice. The interaction is contagious because there are appropriate expectations made.
Choosing the type of book is an important first step. Some like the small size. Experience Books look like ‘flip books’. Cut photos of family members and close friends (including the teacher).The child responds to the auditory expectation of mom asking him the question “Where’s Daddy?” by looking directly at the picture of daddy.
Early on in therapy, I ask people to choose five songs to focus on with their baby – using toy props. Put photos of these very toys into the Experience Book.
Experience Book help parents be sure their child is listening to them and learning all the important baby language. Included pictures of animals, vehicles, seasonal concepts, that related to the Listen, Hear, Talk, and Sing* songs that are easy to sing.
Cardboard-type books or photo albums work best for the very young infant. I let the parents choose – notebook or sketchbook, but if they wait too long, I will start a book for them.
Add pictures of the Ling Sound Test. These sounds represent the frequencies needed to hear across the range of sound for speech to be accessible. It is very important that we know the baby can hear at these levels. We expect the baby who is deaf or hard of hearing to rely on their sense of hearing to process what we say. They use hearing aids or cochlear implants to access sound, but they need to be expected, guided, and reinforced for using their hearing just as any baby does. On each page I use markers to sketch or trace the object representing each sound;
an airplane for ‘ah’, a top for the humming sound ‘mmm’, an owl for ‘ooo’, a monkey for ‘eee’, a fish for ‘sh’, a snake for “s”.
That gets the parents going. Parents can use pictures of what they child likes. “See the birds that go tweet tweet and there’s the duck that goes quack quack, oh, look at the kitty cat, so cute, meow meow”.
“Oh, smell the pretty flowers!”.
“The teddy bear has a blue hat”.
“This card is from grandmother. See grandmother? That’s grandmother in the picture with you. Grandmother loves you.”
Parents are able to enjoy their book and realize their child learns to increase her auditory attention span and hear the familiar language they want to teach her. We keep adding pictures in each session building the book together. Parents might need help with the book. I see the book as an integral part of the therapy process even if much of it is created together in our sessions. As the Auditory-Verbal Therapist, I needed to review what we had talked about last week and be sure these parents had the tool to practice what we will be talking about at the next session.
The goal is to make language a salient part of all experiences a child encounters and to record it in a visual log book. Feeding in language is so important in the early months of language learning. The Experience Book assists family members and others to make language meaningful and fun.
All along the therapy process this is a tool for expanding language and refining listening skills while focusing on the child’s written goals and objectives such as:
- Language levels (labeling, combining words, semantic relations, using phrases)
- specific auditory skills; discrimination of animal sounds (great for vowel development);
- similar sounding words (in English: elevator/alligator; scoop/soup)
- enhancing language through concept development
- emotions; someone crying and talk about why they are sad or mad or confused
- vocabulary expansion (when the child uses a word think of another way to say it)
- syntax (using complete sentences with words in correct order)
- grammar (scene using he, she & they; past tense pictures or what will happen)
- semantics (meaning of what you want to say)
- speech sound development in natural context (a page of /p/ words)
- real world connections; places, books, likes, dislikes, general knowledge
Another parent clarifies; “One thing I really learned using the experience Book was not to ask my son so many questions, just comment. My son likes to look out the window. He saw the moon at night and I drew that in the book. Looking at the picture later, I commented that we saw the moon in the sky out the window. He said ‘moon sky’ and I followed his comment with; “Yes, you saw the moon in the sky. It was dark out. We saw the big round moon way up, up, up, high in the sky.
Kerry Dowling used the Experience Book to help her daughter, Hadley, learn to listen and develop language as I guided them in Auditory-Verbal Therapy from when Hadley was 6 months old. Kerry’s story about how she got started and chronicled Hadley’s listening and language development using Experience Books follows..
Experience Books
By Kerry Dowling – Hadley’s mom
We learned of Experience Books at our very first Auditory-Verbal Therapy session. Lea mentioned how important they are throughout these early years to encourage and sustain strong language development. I quickly put together a photo album of Hadley’s relatives, favorite activities, and prized toys. That was a good way to get started.
Hadley’s first Experience Book was started at age 13 months. Everything Lea first told me about Experience Books has come true. Hadley loves to read and reread her books, taking great delight in discussing the pictures and reliving fun memories. She has favorite pages that she returns to again and again. These Experience Books have hammered language into Hadley’s being, helping words and ideas gel in her brain and generate clear and concise language. Experience Books have become the most important tools we have used in two years of auditory-verbal therapy.
I compiled a list of things that have helped me:
Develop your books around themes. Our earliest books just end whenever we ran out of pages and needed to start another book. After a while, I opted to do a seasonal theme and have since created these books around Spring (March – May), Summer (June – August), Fall (September – November) and Winter (December – February).
Keep a list handy for ideas. There are days when I will be at a loss about what to include in the day’s entry. Some days, I have so many ideas that I can’t use them all. I keep a list (actually, a few of them!) where I jot down ideas to remind myself: that Hadley discovered that some music is sung and some only has instruments; that she was a good friend to someone who was angry; that she told a joke.
Save things! Anything that is mailed to Hadley eventually finds its way into the book. We include tickets, receipts, leaves, drawings, pictures, artwork—anything that Hadley finds interesting or important enough to comment on. We spend a lot of money on double-sided tape.
Involve the child. Around 2, we began asking Hadley what she thought was the favorite part of her day. On busy days, we’d ask her to be specific about the favorite part of a certain activity. Usually, we can use her answer to create the day’s entry in the book.
Share the responsibility. The experience book should not be something that just one parent does. The experience book is such an important tool that you don’t want to risk it becoming a chore. Share the wealth and find a way for both parents to contribute.
Focus on AV goals. While many of the entries are based on events in Hadley’s life, large and small, we also use some days to focus on a short-term goal, like the articulation of a certain sound or learning to categorize objects.
Focus on parenting goals. Once I realized how important these books were to Hadley, I found ways to use them for my own purposes. We have included entries on how to be a good friend, bad behavior, what to do when you have a cold, and how to wash your hands. We’ve also highlighted good decisions and behavior: the day Hadley took her medicine all by herself or chose to speak calmly instead of screaming. It still amazes me how reading about herself and talking about the entry helps promote the desired behavior.
You do not need to be the world’s best artist. You do not need to labor over each entry. If your drawings are unidentifiable, just label underneath. Your child will learn to distinguish one stick figure from another.
Ultimately, these books are for your child. Pages will rip; just tape them up. Pictures may be scribbled upon; just talk about how once a picture is complete, we don’t add to them again. A page may even be torn out. It doesn’t matter. Your child will still love to read the experience book.
Record those heartbreaking moments. My favorite entry is a drawing I did of a bright full moon rising over a pond, where the moon is just over the tops of tall pine trees. Hadley noticed the moon on a drive home one night and we talked about it for 20 minutes. It’s a moment that we may have otherwise forgotten, but now whenever she sees a full moon, Hadley reminds me of that one night.
It’s all about talking. It doesn’t matter what you say about each entry when reviewing them with your child for the umpteenth time. Your child will learn about the nuances of language if you talk naturally about each one. How boring if you always say the exact same thing on each page. This isn’t a story! Ask questions of your child. Mention a memory you have of that same experience. Use it as a way to launch into an activity. Let them do the reminiscing.
The Experience Book is a great early reading tool. Write clearly and carefully so your child isn’t trying to translate your scrawl. When your child begins to sight read, use the known words in the Experience Book to reinforce the learning.
The Experience Book has been an integral part of Hadley’s development. I really can’t think of another tool that we have used that has been more effective in developing and fine-tuning language themes for her.
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