Although I haven’t practiced speech and language therapy for many years, my training has made me very aware of the importance of having use of these most important tools. Babies model both speech (phonetic combinations of articulated vowel and consonant sounds that form a word) and language (the use of words in a structured and conventional way.) As the baby matures, she learns that if she utters something resembling “cookie,” she will most probably be rewarded with a cookie. As she gets older, she may learn that if she wants a cookie and a glass of milk, she may need to express a more complex combination of utterances, such as “may I have cookies and milk, please?”
As we mature, we use speech and language to manipulate our environment to attain more and meet our needs. Our world grows from this manipulation, and we read, we listen, we experiment and we imitate. Moving from one job to another, we may learn nomenclature that had been unknown before we entered the field.
And then, the aging process slows us down, and we find ourselves frustrated and unwilling to use our language that has served us well in the past. Not wanting to make a mistake, we may use the first word that comes to mind, although it may not be the one which we wanted to use. “Senior moments” as we refer to them, become more and more familiar, and we choose to pull out of situations that may cause embarrassment.
Enter the Speech and Language Therapist who is trained to assist with the cognition necessary to help seniors feel more comfortable communicating. Speaking and listening are skills that can certainly be improved, and conditioning to do so is a goal worth achieving. This may be in the form of practicing sentence structure, something our seniors possibly remember from Grammar classes. Or it may be a reinforcement of their familiar names and places. Reviewing family and activities will provide pattern in the brain to help “grasp” the words that will help the senior more readily achieve what they want.
More by Ellyn Mantell: What To Do About Medical Care For Your Parents http://bit.ly/2PcZAFI
There is so much the aging process takes from us, but our speech and language need not be one of them. Communication enriches our lives! It is the tool we most need when socializing with peers.
To that point, Group Living helps to keep seniors interested in others, and that is a basic need we must help our parents achieve. The confidence our parents have that they can converse with and be of interest to others is an amazing and extremely beneficial gift for everyone!