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What do you do if when collecting a severity rating or %SS sample a child uses a lot of rote speech? For example, the child who insists on counting everything, or saying nursery rhymes, or, when putting things away, says ….”and that one in there….and that one in there…and that

If a child does this a few times in one conversation, and it is not the habitual way that of talking in the clinic, then it is not a problem and there is no need to do anything about it. On the other hand, if this happens often, subtly intervene. The aim is to gently move the child on to talking about something different, so that a more representative sample of speech is heard. For example, try to move the “Counting Kid” on to talking about functions, and the “Nursery Rhyme Kid” on to playing a matching game. Then you are more likely to obtain a baseline speech measure that is valid.

The Lidcombe Program Treatment Guide specifies that the clinician watches the parent giving verbal contingences during each clinic visit and gives the parent feedback. Are there any exceptions to that routine?

It is a general rule to watch the parent giving verbal contingencies during each clinic visit. However, towards the end of Stage 1, the speech-language pathologist may judge it to be more useful to spend the time during a clinic visit discussing the treatment and problem solving. However recommended that the speech-language pathologist does allow two weeks to lapse without watching the parent give verbal contingencies during two consecutive visits.