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Age Up Age Well Monthly Blog

May 2026 - Issue 6

Connecting Information to Your Daily Life

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Happy Better Speech and Hearing Month!

I've been a speech-language pathologist for over 40 years. At 16, I briefly thought about acting after the success of class plays and a scholarship offer from Michigan State University to study dramatic arts. A nice lady in a blue suit came to our house, drank coffee and talked about my future. Acting was fun, but I had other ideas. Thank you though! I decided I wanted to be a special education teacher.

My dad taught at Michigan Tech and I started there. He was my advisor. I took only electives and planned to transfer into teaching my third year, but no state school would accept me as a junior due to student teaching requirements. I decided on Northern Michigan University, but still needed a major. I chose communication disorders after going through the course catalog and randomly picked it!

The first time I saw a graduate student in a therapy session, I was hooked. I've been convinced ever since that my profession ultimately chose me.

Closer Look

As a clinician, I've worked with people of all ages with a wide variety of communication delays or disorders. Diagnostic indicators have ranged from autism, to stroke and traumatic brain injury. I've conducted countless evaluations, analyzed results and established functional treatment strategies. With children, I facilitated the development of skills and with adults, the restoration of speech and language.

I also have experience with swallowing disorders including assessment, diet modification and safe oral intake. My youngest patient was born at 24 weeks gestation and came home on his due date. My oldest was 107 years old and had been a pioneer. These people changed my life!

As an SLP I had many options. I could work in a school, hospital, out-patient setting, extended care facility and/or home-based programming. I went into private practice after 10 years because I loved it all and chose to focus on communication.

It involves many skills that work simultaneously and allow us to both receive and provide information. There is the cognitive part of language, the listening part and the speaking part. What we say relies on strong vocabulary, word finding, sentence building and conversational skills. Speech attributes include, but are not limited to volume, clarity and rate.

We use communication to:

There are both verbal and non-verbal modes of communicating. Emails, texting, writing letters, etc. are all essential forms of communicating. Our body language including facial expressions and our tone of voice add meaning to our messaging. I had patients who used assistive communication devices, sign language, and picture boards. Others were skilled in expressing their wants and needs with only gestures and held meaningful conversations without saying a word.

As we age, we may experience occasional word finding difficulty. We know what we want to say and when we can't "find" the word it can be very frustrating. In some cases, if it happens more frequently, some people give up and stop communicating.

Before you do that. Are you willing to try the many ways to keep our word finding skills strong? Read on for some recommendations.

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  • Challenge your vocabulary by naming items in your home. Start in the kitchen and make your way through the house.
  • Challenge your ability to name items from a specific group. Create or find a list of categories online and name up to 5 items per category. They will range from more familiar, i.e. fruit to more complex i.e. foreign cities. Or use the category cards from the game Scattergories.
  • Challenge yourself by naming items/categories by a specific letter. You can start alphabetically. For example, name as many foods as you can that start with the letter A or as many sports that start with the letter B, etc. Scattergories is great because it has a letter cube!
  • Challenge your abstract word finding skills by describing items by attribute, i.e. the size, shape, color, texture, function, etc. For example, an apple is a red fruit that grows on trees. We can make applesauce, apple pie and apple crisp. It comes in many colors and is found in the produce section at the grocery store. Taboo is a great game for this. You have to describe only and can't say the actual word.
  • Challenge your question asking/answering skills. You'll need one other person for this activity. Write down wh-question words on a piece of paper and randomly pull one. Take turns asking each other who, what, where, when, which and why questions. How is another great open question. Remember, if you ask "are" or "do" or "is" questions, you'll likely only get a yes/no response.
  • Challenge your word creation skills using letter tiles from Banangrams, Scrabble, Upwords, etc. Start with a minimum of three letters and gradually increase the expectation to 5+ letters/word. To add an element of competition, play against someone and try to use all the letters you've selected. Lots of problem-solving skills needed!
  • Challenge your other expressive skills to "find" the word you're looking for. Describe it, use gestures and "talk around it." More often than not you will find what you're looking for.
  • Challenge your performance skills. Singing familiar songs is a great way to keep word finding strong!

Cognitive Connection

Communication, either verbal or non-verbal is essential to our overall cognitive well-being. It requires multiple skills working together. We're attentive and focused. We employ our decision making and problem solving. Our memory is challenged with word retrieval and if you complete any of the recommended activities; further challenge your memory by recalling your answers.

This can be accomplished by writing down your responses or taking a picture of words you created with letter tiles. It's essential to keep asking questions. This keeps you independent when advocating for your wants and needs. Asking questions is important when communicating with anyone who is supporting you or providing a service. Write your questions down if that's helpful.

Conversations via phone or face to face keep us socially engaged. Every day in every way...communicate!

Excerpt from Age Up Age Well

"Today I will play a game. Any games. Yes, a word search or crossword puzzle counts. If I'm alone, I have many things I can do at home, or I can find out if a card game is happening at one of the centers. I could host and welcome friends to my place to play... there are games on my computer, phone and tablet. They help me make decisions and remembering the rules strengthens my memory... I can find ways to use old games in a new way... today is the day I embrace the power of play. Good for me."

Quote

"I think the reason that I like so many different games is because I like the way my brain works when I'm playing games. It's more fun."

- John Romero

What's next...

June 2026: Normal aging versus dementia. Know the difference.

Until next time...
Age up Age well
Chris