What is NVLD? updated 1/2023 Children with Non-verbal Learning Disorder (NVLD) struggle with social and spatial disabilities. There is currently no diagnosis of NVLD in the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual for mental disorders). Poor spatial skills combined with good verbal skills is the essential feature required for a diagnosis of NVLD. These children typically have strong verbal skills… Read More
Conversation Scripts: A Social Language Tool
Conversation Scripts. When you think of the word “script,” you might think of words spoken in a conversation during a play or movie. Or, if you are a Speech Pathologist familiar with autism, you might think of “scripting,” when a student with autism recites lines from movies, books, or video games. In this blog piece, I coin the term conversation… Read More
School Supports for Students with Selective Mutism
Speech language pathologists and speech therapy can help identify accommodations for students with selective mutism. updated 2024 Children with selective mutism often talk normally in settings where they are comfortable, like home. In other places, such as speech therapy, at school or the community, they can’t speak due to anxiety. A first step in treating these children is to remove… Read More
Fairy Tales to Teach Perspective-taking
Why improve perspective-taking? Our speech therapy students with social communication disorder find it difficult to take the perspective of another person. This makes it challenging for them to navigate social relationships. It also has an academic impact upon their literacy skills. As our students move on into the early elementary grades, they learn to take into account the perspective of… Read More