The average day for the average family can often be described fairly well in just one word: BUSY. Between work, maintaining the home, getting kids to and from school, after-school activities, such as sports or clubs, and everything in-between, families have packed schedules!

Gastroparesis is a condition in which the motility in your stomach is slowed down or stopped, preventing the stomach from emptying properly.

Education professionals desire quality resources and information related to dual language learners.  In order to provide that, we reached out to Elizabeth D. Peña, Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine.   Dr. Peña, a certified Speech-Language Pathologist, is a professor in the School of Education.  She is also an American Speech Language Hearing Association Fellow. Her research focuses include bilingualism, language impairment, language development, and assessment bias & measurement.  In this three-part blog series Dr. Peña hopes to answer your questions and help dispel common myths.

Written by: David L. Sexton, Jr., MS & Bari Sobelson, MS, LMFT What is the THRIVE Initiative? Penn State’s Clearinghouse for Military Readiness has partnered with the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Office of Military Community and Family Policy to assist parents in nurturing their children as they advance throughout the…

Today we will share a few strategies to help support language and literacy development simultaneously within family activities with family members who are home and who may be deployed or stationed elsewhere. But first, we left you with one word of caution related to early literacy intervention – Try to control the summer camp persona.  It is important for home visitors to remember that not everyone has or loves glue sticks, paints, and safety scissors.  You can substitute sidewalk chalk for paint, use water or soap bubbles to draw pictures outside, draw or write letters on tablets or smart phones and screen capture the image, or use fruit for edible art. 

Recent research has reaffirmed the importance of language and literacy for children’s future academic success and has increasingly recognized the central importance of the family in the development of each.  Interactions that occur between a parent and child such as comforting them when they cry, repeating their babbling, or pointing at and naming pictures in a book all serve to strengthen the child’s communication and social skills while building neural connections that support future development.