As mentioned in our previous post, the first stage of Natural Language Acquisition (NLA) is the use of delayed echolalia... aka gestalts! In other words, children in Stage 1 NLA are processing *all* incoming language as gestalts. A gestalt is simply a word or phrase that a child has heard that they could then use (verbatim) after some time has passed (days, weeks, or even years later!). It is basically a "chunk" of language that gets stored in a child's memory for later use. Your child's gestalts may be short, long, from media sources (books, TV shows, songs, or movies), totally nuanced or even unintelligible, but they are never *wrong*. So, before gestalt targets are chosen and modelled, always try to acknowledge their original gestalt. When it comes to choosing gestalts, just remember: "We are not replacing the child's language, but merely offering suggestions of useful phrases based on our observations and detective work." — @meaningfulspeech by Halle Demchuk, SLPPaediatric SLP | GLP-Trained Clinician | Owner of HAEPI SLP |
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