Q&A with Our Clinical Leads — June 2026

Occupational Therapy team: Big projects call for executive-functioning skills like planning, organizing and time management, and those are learned, not automatic. A written or visual step-by-step schedule helps with getting started, and a simple timer helps with managing time.

Speech & Language Therapy team: Sitting down together beforehand to think the project through out loud — what materials, what order, what deadline — takes a lot of the pressure off. A simple mind map can also help a child visualize and organize their ideas before they dive in.

Occupational Therapy team: Progress is almost never a straight line — it comes in steps, plateaus, and sometimes sudden leaps. A few quiet weeks usually means the brain is consolidating in the background before the next jump, not that nothing is happening. What happens between sessions, at home, matters just as much as the session itself, which is why long gaps — a two-month summer break, for example — can quietly undo progress already made. If there’s only one thing to remember, it’s this: attend consistently, practice a little every day, and talk to us early if something changes or worries you.

Speech & Language Therapy team: We wouldn’t suggest cutting screens out abruptly — that tends to backfire into more tantrums. Instead, make screen time more content-ful: sit with your child, ask questions about what they’re watching, and turn it into two-way communication rather than passive viewing.

Occupational Therapy team: You can also make screen time more functional — videos where the child imitates movement or a dance keep them physically engaged rather than just sitting still.

Speech & Language Therapy team: There should be no screen time during meals — without a screen, a child can actually focus on and enjoy the food. You don’t have to remove it all at once; start with just one screen-free meal a day, in a calm setting, and build from there.

Speech & Language Therapy team: No research shows that learning two languages at once causes a speech or language delay. A bilingual child’s vocabulary is simply split across both languages — count them together and it’s often larger than a monolingual child’s. Mixing languages within a sentence is a normal part of bilingual development, not confusion. If there is a genuine delay, it will show up in both languages, not just one — which is exactly what a speech and language therapist can help you check.

Occupational Therapy team: Young children can’t manage big feelings alone yet — they borrow our calm to learn to self-regulate. A calm voice and presence lowers arousal before any teaching or redirecting can land. It’s not always sensory, either: transitioning between activities or rigidity can look a lot like sensory overload, so it helps to look at the whole picture rather than assume it’s just one thing.

Occupational Therapy team: Rigidity around transitions shows up in a lot of different children and doesn’t have to point to any one diagnosis. What helps regardless of the cause is preparing your child for what’s coming: a heads-up in the morning about the day’s plan, and a visual timer before a transition so they can see time passing and get ready to switch tasks.

Occupational Therapy team: It helps to let your child practice losing in a low-stakes setting rather than avoid it altogether — they’ll meet it at school and on playdates regardless. Talk about the feeling afterward (“it’s okay to feel sad you lost”), while being clear that reactions like ruining the game aren’t okay. Modeling how to lose gracefully yourself — “I’m disappointed I lost, but I can try again” — is one of the most effective ways to teach this.

Speech & Language Therapy team: Some children do outgrow an expressive language delay on their own, but there’s no reliable way to predict which ones will. Understanding language doesn’t guarantee that speaking will catch up at the same pace. Since a delay noticed around age two or three leaves only a year or so before school starts, our advice is to start therapy as soon as possible — there is very little to lose by starting early, and potentially a lot of ground to make up by waiting.

Speech & Language Therapy team: A tantrum has a clear want behind it — the child is focused on getting something, so you can calmly hold the boundary, give them a little space, and avoid negotiating. A meltdown is different: the child is overwhelmed and has lost control, without seeking anything specific. In a meltdown, the goal shifts to keeping them safe and calm rather than teaching in the moment — that conversation can wait until after they’ve recovered. Left unaddressed, a tantrum can escalate into a meltdown, so responding calmly and consistently early on really does matter.

Speech & Language Therapy team: You don’t need special tools — just daily routines. Read books together and pause to ask simple questions. Narrate what you’re doing as you go about the day, and describe what your child is doing too. Start instructions simple and build up in complexity, and model correct language rather than directly correcting mistakes — if your child says “he goed out,” you can simply respond “yes, he went out.” Expanding on what they say (child says “dog,” you say “yes, that’s a brown dog”) builds vocabulary naturally. And keep practicing the specific goals your therapist gives you at home — that’s what carries progress over between sessions.

Occupational Therapy team: Writing is a genuinely complex skill built on several foundations: core and shoulder stability to sit and hold a pencil steadily, fine motor control to move the pencil with precision, visual skills to tell letters like “b” and “d” apart, and attention and memory to hold a sequence of letters in mind while copying. We build those foundations first, through play, coloring and movement — and handwriting itself typically improves as a result, often before we start practicing it directly.