The Carruth Center kicked off our Social Learning groups the week after Labor Day! These groups are led by SLPs who have had specialized training from Social Thinking and who benefit from ongoing mentorship from Renee Attaway-Storer, longtime Parish School associate and director of Camp SOCIAL. These groups help children understand how the social world works by using activities and strategies to help them interpret and respond to different social situations. The Social Thinking methodology is now 25 years old! In that time, much has changed not only with the methodology, but also with how we view neurodivergence. Here is an excellent article from the Social Thinking website about how Social Thinking helps our clients meet their social goals while respecting their neurodivergence: Social Learners and Neurodiversity. Our groups will continue to accept enrollment until the week of October 7th, and we have groups that occur during the day at lunch time as well as afterschool groups.
October 2nd is The Parish School’s 16th annual Giving Voice to Children luncheon. This year’s speaker is Dr. Carol Westby, a renowned speech-language pathologist, author and researcher. Dr. Westby is one of the foremost experts on child development and widely recognized for her development of the renowned Westby Symbolic Play Scale, a research-based scale used to assess children’s social and play skills. Carol was also a longtime friend of The Parish School founder Robbin Parish. Her talk will highlight the power of personal narrative and the role personal narratives play in academic success, social-emotional development and self-regulation for children. Tickets to the event can be purchased here. We hope to see you there!
Mimi Branham, MA, CCC-SLP
Clinic Director
mbranham@carruthcenter.org