Do You Do Two? - Ep. 85
As speech therapists we know the value of early intervention, and judging by the increase in toddlers on my case load, parents understand the value too. But—therapy with a two year old ain’t no picnic! A cranky two year old who wants to do things their way, doesn’t want help, and can’t communicate well makes for a trying therapy session.
What can help us understand two year old behavior better? Play schemas! Play schemas help toddlers make sense of the world, and they involve a fair amount of bashing, banging, pushing, pulling and general destruction testing. Because schemas seem like an obsession when the child is in full throttle mode with them, it helps to understand what schemes they are exploring. That way you can structure therapy to satisfy their needs and meet therapy goals.
--- Useful Links ---
A Guide to Schema Play in Toddlers
Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Transcript
Denise: Welcome to The Speech Umbrella, the show that explores simple but powerful therapy techniques for optimal outcomes. I'm Denise Stratton, a pediatric speech language pathologist of 30 plus years. I'm closer to the end of my career than the beginning, and along the way, I've worked long and hard to become a better therapist. Join me as we explore the many topics that fall under our umbrellas. As SLPs, I want to make your journey smoother. I found the best therapy comes from employing simple techniques with a generous helping of mindfulness.
Hello, this is episode 85 of the Speech Umbrella podcast. Today's topic is about two year olds. Lately I've been seeing a lot of two year olds in my clinic, and this is great. It means parents are aware of what developmental milestones their children need to be meeting, and they're seeking intervention earlier. But when these parents call me, they usually come with this question, do you work with two year olds?
So I'm calling this podcast, Do You Do Two? Now there are a couple of problems I see cropping up around speech therapy with two year olds. Many birth to three programs are based on a parent coaching model, and some parents aren't seeing the progress that they want. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the parent coaching model and I've worked as a parent coach myself, but a parent should not feel ashamed or confused if they want to look at other options.
There's nothing wrong with a second set of eyes on the problem, a second opinion if you will. Since the speech and language impairment exists, the question is not should we intervene, but how? So that's the first problem. Parents sometimes have the impression that because of their child's age, coaching is the only option, but it's not working for them.
Thus, their hesitant query when they call me, do you do two year olds? They have told me that some SLPs aren't comfortable providing therapy for someone as young as two. The second problem lies in the nature of two year olds themselves. You know, sometimes we SLPs look like miracle workers, especially when we get that really easy client and then we get lots of praise for a job that almost did itself.
But to balance out these experiences, nothing can make you look less like a miracle worker than a cranky two year old who wants to do things their way, doesn't want help, and can't really communicate well. And sometimes both you and the two year old need a nap after a session. What I'm going to share with you today can really help therapy sessions with two-year-olds.
But first, here's a blast from the past. My toddler past and my husband Dan's past. I called my mom to verify this information about me. I had heard from someone, I don't know who, that I was such a stubborn toddler, that my mom simply was at her wits end. She did not know what to do with me. And then it even out, something happened and all of a sudden I was the perfect child.
But I do remember this one time when my mother turned on a light switch when I wanted to turn the light switch on, and I lost it. I was infuriated that she had turned on the light switch when I wanted to do it. So I don't know if I was two, but that's how two year olds are now. My husband, dan, kept a stash of Tonka trucks in his crib and he threw them at whoever came into the room and his mom got the brunt of that.
Well, what can help us understand this two year old behavior better, freaking out when someone turns on the light switch for you, throwing trucks at people? The answer in part is play schemas. So here's what we're gonna cover today. What is a play schema, why are they so important, eight common play schemas, and some therapy examples.
Okay, so what is a play schema? By the way, I've taken my information today from an article by Alexis Ralphs called A Guide to Play Schemas and Toddlers. I found out on his website 100 toys.com, which is a wealth of information on child development. But here's what Ralphs says about play schemas, quote: "Schema play is how our children learn to make sense of the world. Schema play is especially noticeable in toddlers bashing, banging, pushing, pulling, destruction testing is a key feature of this kind of activity. What does this thing do? What happens if I drop it, will it break if I hit it, what if I hit it again?"
Your child wants the answers to all these questions and will persevere until she has them. She is trying to make sense of the world one action at a time. So schemas helped take us from the concrete to abstract. So as a child, if you walk from point A to point B, you're gonna understand trajectory better, and eventually you'll be able to imagine the trajectory without walking it yourself. But in the meantime, you have this driving need to walk the walk. And this can help us understand when the two year old says, do it myself. Schemas can seem like an obsession when the child is in a full throttle mode with it, and then they may drop it quickly and move on to a new schema. As you will see, schema play lays the foundation for critical skills later in life.
So understanding what schema our young clients are exploring can make therapy go a lot smoother. The schemas I'm talking about today are action schemas, and there are other schemas such as for form, which help in understanding how things are arranged. I think that's a fascinating topic for another day, but for today's purposes, I'm sticking to these eight action schemas, and these are not a comprehensive list in theory, you could have an infinite number of schemas, but what we have here today is a robust sample. So the eighth schemas are enclosing, connecting, orientation, transporting, trajectory, positioning, enveloping and rotation. Sounds like they're little scientists, doesn't it?
So in closing, it's all about creating boundaries. Think of, uh, toy fence around a barn or drawing circles around things, and when children enclose, they're learning that objects or ideas can be contained in a discreet space and that anything outside this is a separate entity. And guess what? This leads to letter formation and drawing faces and bodies.
Connecting includes disconnecting as much as connecting. Think train tracks, building blocks, glue, or maybe connecting physically, like holding hands. This is an exploration of how things come together and fall apart. And from what I've seen, disassembly is super fun. I'm guessing I was in the connecting schema during my light switch tantrum because I wanted so badly to physically touch that switch myself.
Orientation, seeing things from a different point of view, so lying upside down, hanging upside down, lying on top of the sofa, climbing up and down the stairs to see things from a different perspective. This is the foundation for physical activities and games, and it helps them predict how another player might move.
Okay, transporting is moving items from A to B. Think of putting groceries away, moving things with baskets and bags. Lots of outside play where you can move sticks and rocks around. Transporting is very satisfying because it involves task completion. So this transporting schema reminds me of task oriented movement, which is all about physical movements and task completion to build executive function. So check out Episode 76 for more on task oriented movement, because I think transporting could really fit into working on task-oriented movement.
Trajectory, dropping and throwing things. Think of the food from the high chair. As frustrating as this is, there is a reason for this. The child wants to know, will it smash? Will its splat? Inquiring toddlers want to know. It leads to throwing, catching, kicking. As you might have guessed, Dan was exploring trajectory with his Tonka truck throwing.
Positioning is arranging things, just so lining things up. It leads to skill such as setting the table, putting toys and clothes away, even creating patterns in math and keeping homework neat. Now, my mother remembers my positioning schema play cuz I picked things up when I put 'em in cupboards. I did a lot of that and she says that was kind of a nice schema. So games like Connect Four, threading beads, pop beads, those are all positioning schema play. I actually have a wooden block activity with different shapes you can use to make animals on vehicles. I really love that one, and the kids love it too.
Okay, enveloping. So kids want to know what happens when they wrap up or hide an object. They like to make dens, climb in boxes, fill empty boxes and bins and dump things out. And playing hide and seek is part of enveloping. It relates to object permanence. Have you ever seen a child draw something and then completely obliterate it with crayons or paint? And they keep on working on it until there are holes in the paper and sometimes we think, well, what are they doing? That was a good picture. Or maybe it looks like us to poor motor control. But it could just as well be that the child is in the developing schema and they want to make the figure disappear.
They don't care if they make it reappear. They want to know what happens if they make it disappear. I find this really interesting that the enveloping schema relates to attachment theory, and I've got this quote from Ralph's. This is important from a developmental perspective because she has the confidence to leave you in order to go off and explore the environment.
She has the confidence to play and to interact with others safe in the knowledge that you will be there for her if ever she needs you. She has new and interesting experiences, close quote. So a child needs to go through the, an enveloping play schema in order to understand that their parents will come back for them and have the confidence to leave and have all these fascinating and wonderful experiences out in the world. So I just think that's very interesting.
Finally, the rotation schema involves twirling, rolling, winding, ball play. Rotation schemes are the beginning of understanding rotational symmetry and math and all sorts of science. Who knew that your child spinning around and around until they fall down dizzy was the beginning of a stellar career in math and science.
Here's a story about a toddler who was in the enveloping schema, but I didn't realize it at first. I have a toy box in my room. It's quite a large toy box, and I load it up at the beginning of the day with the things I'm gonna need for the next couple hours because I have clients back to back and I don't have time to go to the toy closet and pull out what I need each time.
And the children know that if they ask, I set up this communication expectation and they need to ask to open the box, and then they get to open it and we pull out whatever we're gonna use and we put it back, get something else out. Well, one day I just had too many therapy materials to fit them all in the box, so I put her stuff in a bag.
Not okay with her. She really, really wanted to open the box and it just threw the whole therapy session off. And then when it was time to go, she tried to climb into the toy box, which might have been a fun activity, but it was full of toys. She couldn't do that and she'd never done that before, and she was just so insistent about climbing into the box, and then she squeezed herself into a small corner between the box and the cabinet.
And her mom was saying, what is up with you today? Well, shortly after that, I ran across this article on schemas and I was like, aha, she was in the enveloping play schema. Well, let's see if I can do with that next time she comes. So now I pay attention when a session starts to go south with a toddler. And this happened recently that I had a toddler who just was happy one session, very unhappy the next, and I started to pay attention.
And I thought, I think he's in the enveloping schema because he really likes this activity where he is just putting things in, and putting things in. So the next session, I got this can, I call it my ribbon can, and some of you SLPs might have something like it. It's a can with a lid on it that I cut slits in it and I have this ribbon in it that I knotted at both ends saying you can pull it up, and we practice prolonging a sound, like saying ahh or whatever, and we pull the ribbon up as we practice prolonging the sound. Well, it's a pretty big can, and I thought we'll just use this. So I put whatever we were playing with in the can, and then we practice saying things and pulling the ribbons up. And then when all the ribbons were up, we took whatever it was out of the can and all of a sudden it was like magic. It's like, yes, this therapy is so much fun because we were putting things in and we were taking things out and that satisfied his huge need to explore the enveloping schema.
Now I have one client who is into connecting and disconnecting in a big way. He's not a toddler anymore. He's older than two, but emotionally he's a bit behind, and there really is no set time for these play schemas when they go into them and come out of them. It's just really his big time obsession right now, and we've had some difficult sessions. But when I chose every therapy toy with a connecting schema in mind, things went better. It seems nothing in his world is right unless he can take it apart. So he is really into the disconnecting, and then he'll connect it himself maybe just so he can disconnect it again. But you know, he also has some attachment issues, so I'm thinking about doing some enveloping play too, if it'll have it, and see if that can help with the attachment issues.
Well, that's all for today, but I want to close with this quote from N.V. Scarfe: all play is associated with intense thought activity and rapid intellectual growth. The highest form of research is essentially play, so let's let our little scientists play in the way they are ready to play in the way they are deeply interested in, and things will go better for everyone.
In closing, the eight schemas are enclosing, connecting, orientation, transporting trajectory, positioning, enveloping, and rotation. So find ways to support their research, their play schemas, and figure out how to do too. Thanks for listening. Share this podcast with your SLP friends and join the conversation at dstrattonslp on Instagram or the Speech Umbrella on Facebook, YouTube, and of course, my website, the speech umbrella.com.
See you there.
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