~ Behavior is Behavior ~

As a young parent, and sometimes even as an older one, I often mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that my child was misbehaving when a helper initiated a conversation about my child's "behavior." However, this was a misconception. "Behavior" encompasses how our child conducts themselves, including their actions, reactions, and overall functioning in response to everyday environments and situations. This brief episode highlights the importance of understanding the full scope of the term "behavior," particularly when it is being discussed by helpers. Check out the Late Talkers Foundation website for more helpful resources: https://latetalkers.org/ INTRODUCING MARY: Mary Camarata is a speech pathologist with more than 40 years experience teaching children with a wide variety of abilities, including giftedness, exceptional learners, language disorder, Autism, and cognitive disabilities. In addition to assisting families and schools across the country, she has coordinated numerous federally funded research projects on language & learning, support models, treatment efficacy, and behavior. most. In this capacity, she has been an author of more than 35 scholarly papers appearing in peer-reviewed journals. Over the past years, she has held positions at Pennsylvania State University, University of California Santa Barbara, and Vanderbilt University. More recently, assisted with the development of new tests for the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities and Achievement. Mary is in private practice assisting families whose children are experiencing developmental delays, have successful outcomes in their homes, school, and other daily environments. Finally, she is the mother of seven children, including one who had an IEP from preschool through middle school. LATE TALKING: A SYMPTOM OR A STAGE Late-Talking: A Symptom or a Stage is a best-selling book by Stephen Camarata, Ph.D., about late-talking in all its variations. The 2nd edition of the book is about to be released. In this video series, Collette Wieland and Stephen Camarata explore each chapter of this book and discuss the questions on the minds of many parents of late-talking children. ABOUT DR. CAMARATA: Stephen Camarata, Ph.D. CCC-SLP is a late talker himself and is an internationally recognized expert on child development broadly with a focus on how children learn to talk. His clinical and scientific expertise includes speech and language intervention in children with autism, down syndrome, hearing loss, and developmental language disorder (DLD). Dr. Camarata is a professor of Hearing & Speech, Psychiatry, and Otolaryngology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a Professor of Psychology and Human Development and Special Education at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. He has written two books related to development, “Late Talking Children: A Symptom or a Stage” MIT Press 2014 and “The Intuitive Parent” Penguin 2017, and has a regular blog on Psychology Today