Seattle Deaf Film Festival
For the first time in the Northwest, audiences can expect to see films created by, for, or about the deaf community, in generes ranging from documentary to drama to comedy to animation, in the Seattle Deaf Film Festival. The event will be held at the University of Washington, March 30 through April 1. The festival is presented by Deaf Spotlight, a non-profit that focuses on the culture and creativity of the deaf community and is sponsored by the UW’s ASL (American Sign Language) and Deaf Studies Program.
Feature films and shorts have been submitted from the U.S., England, France, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, South Africa, and Mexico. All films will have subtitles, including subtitled translations when the actors sign rather than speak.
The Seattle Deaf Film Festival will be held in 120 Kane Hall. A schedule of films and ticket prices will be posted on Deaf Spotlight’s website in early February, at www.deafspotlight .com.
Meet Speech Coordinator Amanda Cendoya
Amanda Cendoya grew up in Woodinville, and as a child she had dreams of becoming a teacher or a marine biologist. She attended Western Washington University, and there she found her passion for writing. Amanda received her bachelor of arts degree in Journalism-Public Relations in 2009.
Amanda has been with ESHC for almost two years now, and one of her favorite things about working at the clinic are all of the wonderful speech patients she gets to interact with on a daily basis. She also enjoys working for a company that provides the community with such wonderful care, and learning all there is to know about the audiology and speech worlds.
In her spare time Amanda enjoys being a newlywed, as well as playing volleyball, reading, baking and spending time with her friends and family, especially her one year old niece Mia.
Promoting Speech Development in Infants
In a recent blog written by speech-language pathologist Jacqueline Kellner-Hiczewski, she talks about the importance of talking to your child from birth to promote speech development. The blog explains that from birth parents should act like their child’s teacher.
Jacqueline offers some examples of taking advantage of everyday activities that are great opportunities to communicate with your child. She suggests while cooking dinner, walk the child through each step. For example say, “It’s time to make dinner! What should we have? I think we should make chicken with broccoli and carrots. Broccoli is green and carrots are orange. Now I’m going to turn on the stove. Make sure to never touch the stove because it is very hot!”
Using everyday activities like this is a wonderful way to help your child’s language development. To see more examples and to read the entire blog click here.
If you are concerned at all about your infant’s speech please be sure to call our office to set up a speech evaluation. Our speech therapy team has recently revamped our Early Language Program into a 12 session program that teaches parents how to effectively communicate with their child. For more information about this program visit our website.
Get Fit
For the new year, many of us have set a resolution to “get fit!” While you may be concentrating on the tradmill, you might also want to consider adding a “work out” for your brain in the new year!
Our brains are complex, with different areas and functions that can all be enhanced through mental exercise. We’ve all heard the term “use it or loose it,” and for the brain this is true in many respects. When you “work out” your brain there are both short-term and long-term benefits. Short-term you will see an improvement in concentration and memory along with sustained mental clarity under stressful situations. And long-term studies have shown that exercising your brain can create “reserves” that help protect individuals against potential problems such as Alzheimer’s.
Additionally, you can help improve your listening skills through auditory training. At ESHC we encourage all our hearing patients to enhance their listening skills through LACE, an at home “workout” for your ears. The benefits seen by those who have completed the program are astonishing.
Other tips for enhancing brain power in the new year include;
- For stress management: a 5-minute visualization, combining deep and regular breathings with seeing in our mind’s eye beautiful landscapes and/ or remembering times in our past when we have been successful at a tough task
- For short-term memory: try a series subtracting 7 from 200 (200 193 186 179…), or a series involving multiplication (2,3 4,6 6,9 8,12…) or exponential series (2 4 8 16 32 64…) the goal is not to be a math genius, simply to train and improve our short-term memory. Another way is to try and remember our friends telephone numbers.
- In general: try something different every day, no matter how little. Take a different route to work. Talk to a different colleague. Ask an unexpected question. Approach every day as a living experiment, a learning opportunity.
A Big Snow Day Thanks
We want to send out a BIG thank you to our staff, clinicians and doctors for making the trek to the office over the past two days through the slush and snow. Our speech team will be in the office again tomorrow morning. Should you need to cancel or reschedule, please let us know. Have a wonderful weekend!
Lip Reading
In a recent MSNBC article they revealed a new study indicating that babies learn to speak, not just by listening to their parents and caregivers but by watching them. Our little angels are shown to be pretty good lip readers by researchers from Florida Atlatntic University. The group of infants, ranging from four to 12 months of age, watched videos of women speaking either in English, the native language used at home, or in Spanish, a language foreign to them. The researchers used eye tracking devices to study the eye movements and looked at developmental changes in attention to the eyes and mouth.
Results showed that at four months of age, babies focused almost solely on the women’s eyes. But by six to eight months of age, when the infants entered the so-called “babbling” stage of language acquisition and reached a milestone of cognitive development in which they can direct their attention to things they find interesting, their focus shifted to the women’s mouths. They continue to “lip read” until about 10 months of age, a point when they finally begin mastering the basic features of their native language. At this point, infants also begin to shift their attention back to the eyes. The data suggests that infants who continue to focus most of their attention on the mouth pst 1 months of age are probably not developing at age-appropriate perceptual and cognitive skills and may be at risk for disorders such as autism.
Although more research is needed, this finding could lead to earlier diagnosis and intervention for autism spectrum disorders, estimated, on average, to affect 1 in 110 children in the United States alone. Currently diagnosis with behavioral testing begins around 18 months of age. Earlier treatment can ensure the best possible developmental outcomes for children with autism.
We’re Open
After a late start today, our offices are open. Should you be unable to make it into the office, please call (Bellevue – 425.454.1883, Kirkland – 425.899.5050, Redmond – 425.882.4347) or email, and we will reschedule you for a later date.
Before leaving your house, please check road conditions and travel safe!
Snow Closure
The Pacific Northwest Snowmageddon has delivered. With a few inches already on the ground and more to come throughout the day, our three offices have been closed for the safety of our staff and patients. If you do have to be out on the roads today, please drive carefully and be prepared. We wish everyone a safe and warm snow day. We will post announcements on the status of our office as soon as we know them for Thursday.
Pinterest for SLPs
Speech language pathologists across the country have recently started taking advantage of the new social media site Pinterest. It was started in 2010 and works as a virtual “pinboard” that lets you organize and share all of the wonderful things you find on the internet. You can browse other people’s pinboards to find new and interesting ideas with people that share your similar interests.
Speech therapists can “follow” one another’s pinboards to share innovative ideas for therapy sessions including apps for ipads, and detailed guides for fun do-it-yourself crafts and activities. Some ideas that we have stumbled upon that are great ideas for our patients include plastic Easter eggs that are used to help kids understand compound words as well as a revamped version of Candy Land that is all about learning nouns, verbs and adjectives.
No matter what your hobbies and interests include, the possibilities are endless on what you can find on Pinterest, and it has turned out to be a great resource for speech therapists as well.
MLK Jr. Day
Today our offices are open, despite snowy weather, but we take the time to honor and remember the late Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a man of service, a man of change and a man of courage.
We’ve enjoyed learning more about his work and reading reflections from other members of the Pacific Northwest on the Seattle Times special section dedicated to MLK Jr. We encourage you to go read and reflect today!
“Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: – ‘ We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.’” – MLK Jr. Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963
Happy MLK Jr. Day from all of us here at ESHC!