Written by: Laila Wang, FCSN Voices Youth Reporter
Graphics by: Angel Li, FCSN Voices Graphic Artist

Ming-Chen Chuang is a Speech Language Pathologist at the Santa Clara County of Education, where she provides services to students with neuroatypical development in areas of speech, language, and communication. She received her Bachelor’s degree from National Chengchi University, Taiwan, and her Master’s degrees in linguistics and Speech and Language Services from UNC Chapel Hill. First introduced to FCSN through one of her student’s parents, Chuang has since given several talks at FCSN about effective communication skills for special needs families.

In this interview, Chuang shares insights into the role of a speech language pathologist and discusses lifelong communication skills that special needs families, especially parents, can use to foster meaningful interactions with their children and with various members of their children’s support system.

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What is a Speech Language Pathologist? 

As a speech language pathologist, Chuang specializes in helping students with Individual Educational Programs (IEPs) gain or develop communication skills that they need in order to meet their communication needs and to access their classroom curriculum and programs. She serves children with developmental disorders, or children in rehabilitation due to illnesses or injuries. Because she has such a wide variety of students, Chuang adapts each of her therapy sessions to fit each student’s needs. She begins by considering the specific goals for the student, seeing what areas they need to improve on such as semantics, phonology, pronunciation, syntax, pragmatics, or functional communication. Then, she creates a schedule for the therapy session based on the students’ goals and capabilities. For example, visual schedules are always utilized in therapy sessions to help students go through therapy activities and transitions smoothly, but for visually impaired students, Chuang might use a tactile schedule that they can touch and understand. 

For individuals with more severe speech or language challenges that may not be able to communicate functionally through verbalization, Chuang helps them learn to communicate through various augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. AAC is multimodal, encompassing all of the ways an individual may communicate apart from talking and includes unaided modes of communication (gestures and facial expressions and manual signs) and aided modes of communication (using communication boards with symbols or speech-generating devices). 

Communication Skills for Parents

In order to aid students in achieving independent communication, Chuang emphasizes the importance of family support. Here, she shares some advice that parents of individuals with communication challenges can benefit from:

1.  Set specific goals: By aligning the individual’s long-term goals (whether in education, employment, independent living, etc.) with their speech and language goals, parents and caregivers can aid speech-language pathologists like Chuang to identify exactly what to help the students with and how to plan an effective therapy session.
2. Practice skills learned in therapy at home: In order to do this, Chuang explains that parents must “presume competence” and “give [the kids] lots of opportunities” to use their new skills. They can do this by “prompting” their child to try their skill in several ways, such as by asking a question and waiting for the child to formulate an answer, or by pointing at the device to indicate the child to type a response.
3. Avoid over-prompting: To achieve independent communication, Chuang advises against anticipating the child’s needs, as some parents cater to the students without letting them try to communicate their thoughts themselves. Eventually, once the child has solidified the skill, parents can gradually “fade out the prompt” and the child can communicate without prompting. 

Working with Parents

When working with different families, Chuang recognizes that “each family has different dynamics, and it’s really individualized.” There is no one method or therapy strategy that works for every family, and each family must work closely with a therapist as a team to figure out a unique solution that works for them. Chuang herself generally does not like to impose unilateral-determined instructions or therapy goals on the parents. She would rather start a conversation with them first and then follow the parents’ lead. If the parents’ ideas don’t work, she would then invite the parents to her therapy sessions and have them observe how other alternative strategies may benefit their child. In Chuang’s program, parents are treated as partners and members of the IEP team: “[Family] dynamics is what determines how we implement the IEP, what the parents want to work on, and how much they are able to follow through at home.”

For instance, Chuang shares how family dynamics impact her nonverbal students, many of which use communication devices consisting of a computer or a tablet and sometimes with different mounting systems. Chuang encourages parents to take those devices home so that students can practice using them. However, while some parents have the resources and are willing to try, others might feel overwhelmed and intimidated. Whatever the case, Chuang “wants the parents to know that there’s no pressure because we know that all these parents, especially those with children who were just diagnosed and evaluated with initial IEPs, are already very busy and probably quite overwhelmed with all the information and scheduling for different therapy sessions, medical appointments, etc.” On the other hand, Chuang will continue to invite the parents to therapy sessions and share their child’s progress with them. More often than not, the parents will start to see the power of communication and be ready to embrace and try the device or communication system recommended. 

Advice for Parents

Ultimately, Chuang strongly encourages parents of children with neuroatypical development to work closely with their school system (e.g., teacher, psychologist, resource specialist, behavior specialist, etc.), therapists (e.g., OT, SLP, PT, etc.), and use efficient communication. This allows the clinician to “design or recommend appropriate goals” for the student based on the family’s dynamics and the student’s needs.

Overall, throughout her years of working in speech-language pathology, Chuang has gained valuable experiences to help students improve their communication skills and extends her services to parents of children with neuroatypical development as well. Although she spends most of her time today working for the County, she admires FCSN’s cause and loves to get involved when she can.