Books, books, books. A speech-language pathologist’s life line. Without children’s literature, I don’t know how I would do my job! When working on social communication skills, I always search for books and stories on specific topics, as I find this to be an essential method for teaching these skills. Working on not interrupting? There’s a book for that! Working on accepting “no” as an answer? There’s a book for that too! What about helping children to have a proportionate reaction that matches the size of their problem? There are tons of books to help your clients with this topic! But what about when there isn’t a book for a certain topic? What do you do then? Well, if you’re me, you write your own book!
During a session, I realized that one of my preschool aged clients had a hard time understanding when people were using a tone of voice that demonstrated they were frustrated with him. He also had difficulty understanding that when he raised his voice around his peers, they tended to feel uncomfortable, concerned and scared. I started to look for a book on tone of voice and realized that I could not find one on this topic. Then, I looked for a book on understanding body language and facial expressions and came up empty again. At that point, I realized that the topic of nonverbal communication is underrepresented in children’s literature. When it comes to children ages eight and older, there are tons of videos and worksheets on this complicated topic, but there was nothing for my younger clients.
With that in mind, I set out to write The Adventures of David and Delilah, a three book series, in which the main character, Delilah, teaches her twin brother, David, to de-code tone of voice, facial expressions and body language. Throughout the three books, Delilah engages her brother and the reader in meaningful discussion to promote his own social emotional development. The goal of this book is to help to make implicit social rules more explicit, allowing me and other SLPs to assist our clients in becoming more confident and competent in social situations.
I cannot wait to release my book to use with my clients and hopefully to help other professionals like occupation therapists, teachers, social workers and psychologists. I also hope that this book will be helpful for parents. Keep your eyes peeled for more information including some page teasers like the one below as well as a release date.
Feel free to contact me for some of my favourite books to work on social communication skills and let me know some of your favourites!