Does Your Child Have a Traumatic Brain Injury?
Our Expert Speech & Language Therapists Provide Evidence Based,Quality Therapy to Help Children With Traumatic Brain Injury
Some Facts About Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
Traumatic Brain Injury occurs as the result of impact to the head, for example, sustained from a fall or car accident.
The effects on a child’s development from a TBI vary greatly depending on when the injury occurred, which part/s of the brain were affected, and to what extent.
‘Common’ effects of a TBI range from difficulty walking, to tiredness, to difficulties with language and social skills.
Various therapies may all support a child with a traumatic brain injury to rebuild, or develop skills. These include physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and psychotherapy.
Traumatic Brain Injuries affect approximately 5.6 children per 100 000 each year in the UK.
It is important to note that no two children with Traumatic Brain Injuries will have the same sort of strengths and difficulties. It is important that all children are regarded as individuals when seeking therapy and determining support.
Children with Traumatic Brain Injury can struggle with:
Paying attention to other people and activities.
Their memory – this might be short – term difficulties, or difficulties in working memory. This can make it difficult for them to learn new information, including language.
Finding the word they want to use. They might use a word which is related to the target word (such as 'fork’ instead of 'spoon') or a word which sounds similar (such as ‘sponge’ instead of ‘spoon’). This happens to everybody from time to time, but can be more pronounced in children who have acquired a brain injury.
Using the words in a sentence in the right order.
Understanding language, including verbal instructions.
Being understood by others due to speech sound difficulties. These can be caused by a variety of different issues.
The social rules of having a conversation, like taking turns with others, staying on topic, responding appropriately to what someone has said, and so on.
Children with Traumatic Brain Injury and Communication Skills
Here are some of the ways that good speech and language therapy can help children with Traumatic Brain Injury and their families:
Supporting the child to develop their understanding of language.
Supporting this child to develop their use of language and express their wants, needs, ideas and feelings.
Facilitating better access to learning by supporting the team around the child and the child with specific strategies.
Supporting speech sound development where appropriate to make the child’s speech easier to understand.
Supporting the child to develop their social understanding and social communication skills.
Developing the child’s ability to attend to activities and better recall language.
Supporting the child to understand and communicate their feelings.
Providing support and advice to the child’s family and education team to support their communication.
Signposting families to complementary therapies as appropriate.
Signposting families to appropriate and reliable sources of information and support.
Tips For Parents on How to Support Children With Traumatic Brain Injury:
As all children with a traumatic brain injury will have different strengths and difficulties, the most important advice will come from your Speech and Language Therapist after they have assessed your child’s communication. However, there are some general tips for supporting your child:
When communicating with your child, support your language with visual cues as much as possible - for example, use pictures, objects, Sign or gestures, pointing, facial expressions, and so on. Spoken words disappear quickly, whereas visual cues last longer or can be permanent.
If you’d like to learn some basic Makaton signs to use with your child, watching ‘Something Special’ (Mr Tumble) on CBeebies is a great place to start – watch the programme together and practice your Signs!
Copy sounds, words and signs back to your child when they attempt to communicate. Always model the correct pronunciation/ word/ sentence even if your child has made a slight error in theirs, but don’t make your child copy you.
Be enthusiastic! Using lots of praise, expressive intonation and exaggerated facial expressions will support your child to be engaged in communicating with you.
Be responsive to any attempts your child makes to communicate – remembering that this might look like different behaviours as well as sounds, words and gestures.
Repetition is key! When we learn new words we need to hear them lots of times in context to understand their meaning. Try choosing one key word per day to focus on and repeat it lots of times.
When learning new words, try to focus on lots of different things about the word. For example, what does it look like? Sound like? Smell like? Can you think of a word that rhymes? What sound does it start/ end with? The more information you can link to the word, the easier it will be for your child to recall it.
Be explicit in what your child has done well when praising them. For example, ‘fantastic listening!’, ‘that was a really nice sentence – I – saw- a dog. Good job!’
Use the 5 finger rule – aim to comment on what your child is doing 4 times before asking them a question. For example; “big car! (1) ......driving the car (2)......broom broom crash! (3).....it’s red (4).......what’s this one?”.
How Our Speech and Language Therapy Can Help Children and Young People with Traumatic Brain Injury
We assess each child’s needs holistically and design our treatment plans around the unique needs of each child. At the centre of everything we do are the goals, aspirations and expectations of the child and their family.
Here are some of the many evidence-based therapy approaches and frameworks we are specially trained to use to help children with Traumatic Brain Injury develop their communication skills.
BSL, Makaton and Signalong Sign Language
Total Communication and AAC approaches
Intensive Interaction
Attention Autism (for joint attention skills)
Talking Mats
SMILE (Strategies and measurable interaction with Live English)
The Zones of Regulation
Narrative Intervention Programme
Colourful Semantics and Shape Coding
Elklan
Word Aware
Caroline Bowen speech sound disorders and childhood apraxia of speech
How Can We Help You and Your child?
If you’re interested in how our expert speech and language therapy can help your child with Traumatic Brain Injury, click below to request a free telephone consultation with one of our therapists or to book an initial assessment appointment. We will assess your child’s strengths and needs and design a therapy package to suit your child’s unique learning style, and your budget. We can also support children and young people in the over one hundred schools that commission our schools speech and language therapy service.
