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Clare Hollings is a Speech Pathologist with over 15 years' experience working with children. She has a strong interest in working with children under five years old. Clare has been involved in collaborative projects with preschools, early childhood education and care centres and playgroups to improve the communication skills of children in these settings and to provide support and education to early childhood workers. Clare currently works in private practise for North Shore Speech Therapy.
I have recently had interesting conversations with two different parents about reactions to their child being seen by a Speech Pathologist. The first was a mother of a toddler who had a history of ear infections which was causing some hearing loss. At 18 months old he had about four single words and was certainly not as talkative as his older brother. His mum was very concerned with his language development and had sought out Speech Pathology advice. She told me that all her friends thought that she was 'crazy' and that her child was way too young to be receiving any kind of therapy. She thought it was one of the best things that she had ever done.
The second conversation was with the mother of a four year old boy whose speech is very difficult to understand, even for those people who know him well. He has a significant speech disorder and is likely to require Speech Pathology for some time. His difficulties have caused stress for his family as they worried about how he would manage the recent transition to preschool, and the prospect of school is looming. His mum reported that people ask her why her son is seeing a Speech Pathologist, when he is only four, and tell her that he will probably grow out of it. She is amazed that people still question her decision to seek out Speech Pathology when her son's speech is often unintelligible.
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