Tom Bailey 0:07
Hello and welcome to succeed through speaking, the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
Hello, I'm Tom Bailey and in today's episode, I'll be getting snow Adriana Skuka, who's the founder of speech teach? And is an expert in early childhood communication development. So Adriana, hello and a very warm welcome to today's episode.
Adriana Skuka 0:40
Oh, thank you very much for the invite. Thanks for coming
Tom Bailey 0:43
and just out of interest for both me and the listeners. whereabouts are you in the world right now?
Adriana Skuka 0:48
Even Kelowna, the Okanagan Valley and that's in British Columbia, Canada.
Tom Bailey 0:54
Amazing. Thanks for sharing. And I just want to share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So Adriana specialises in working with families of young children, schools, and children themselves who have communication and language difficulties. The title for today's episode is the importance of language foundation in early years. And Adriana is going to explain all about this in just seven minutes. So question, one for you today is Who are your ideal clients?
Adriana Skuka 1:26
Yeah, thank you, Tom, I enjoy working with all age groups. But my ideal client that I enjoyed most is working with the preschool age, not from zero to age six. And the reason being is that at that age, the children are learning the foundation of language. And it and we are working more on preventing speech and language difficulties then trying to change their habits and, and work on that. Of course,
Tom Bailey 1:54
thank you very much. And what do you think of this age group or your clients? What would you say is typically the biggest challenge that they face
Adriana Skuka 2:00
is looking back on myself, when I entered kindergarten, I didn't know any English at all. And I recall having a difficult time understanding the directions from the teacher, even when it was written, it was hard to understand. And I couldn't express my thoughts the way I wanted to. And I feel that's the same thing with these little kids, when, when we they're having they have difficulty understanding and expressing themselves. And sometimes their speech sounds are in error. So what they're trying to say doesn't come out clearly. And then also, they don't know how to use it, possibly they don't know how to greet people, they don't know how to request and they end up being shy. And it's difficult for them.
Tom Bailey 2:43
Yeah, so I completely understand the challenge then. So let's think about the impact of this what, what negative impacts can that have on them for now or in their future lives?
Adriana Skuka 2:53
Yeah, so if you can imagine not being able to talk or not being able to communicate what you really want, you'll, you start feeling a little bit of self calm, conscious about your speech, language. Also, you'll, if it affects them, their relationships might make them shy. And overall, it they don't develop the skills they need academically, and later in life, they may not be able to reach the goals they really want to. Yeah,
Tom Bailey 3:18
completely makes sense. And I can personally resonate with that from from my childhood as well. So what would you say is one piece of valuable advice that you might give to that child or their parents that really help them solve this challenge of language as well?
Adriana Skuka 3:35
Yeah, when a child is young, I would I would suggest for parents, some advice for parents would be to keep an eye on your child watch, are they able to communicate? Is there any frustration happening? Are they do they have vocabulary in what is happening? So just keep an eye on their language? And and keep that communication going? Right?
Tom Bailey 3:56
And is there anything that you should be looking out for in terms of key milestones or key phases for that child?
Adriana Skuka 4:02
Yeah, you would want to check that we could check on there are checklists available for the different age groups. And what I would suggest is having a look at a checklist and just see if my child meeting the milestones they should be meeting at that age.
Tom Bailey 4:20
Right? And do you have a resource or checklist that you can offer to these parents? They can go and download that today?
Adriana Skuka 4:26
Yes, actually, I do. I have a checklist for children ages, right from birth until age eight. My website Yeah.
Tom Bailey 4:36
Okay. And I know that your website is and speech-teach.com. So what ill do is I'll put a link to that in my show notes below. And what do they need to click on when they get their
Adriana Skuka 4:48
resources? Okay, got it. Yeah, thank you.
Tom Bailey 4:51
Perfect. So click on Resources and you can download those checklists for children ages, birth all the way through to age eight. Okay, so you You briefly mentioned about your challenges with with language so I guess when you look back what would you say is one of your greatest learnings or even mistakes that you made as a child? And what did you learn from it?
Adriana Skuka 5:14
Okay yeah thank you I recall again when I didn't know how to speak English very well and I feel like it made me feel shy I was quieter i would i would be kinder to myself I about yet I was social on the inside and, and I spent a lot of time working and trying to stake and get caught up with them. So my my advice would be, you know, try to catch these, these situations in children, watch them and try to catch them when as early as you can, and give them that confidence in language speed so that they can blossom and reach the goals they want.
Tom Bailey 5:49
Right? And just out of interest, would you say that your journey and your own story is what's driven you to now have so much passion for helping children develop their language,
Adriana Skuka 6:00
I just, I guess I find that that we have the potential in us to do that do to reach goals and things and that also learning the fact that there's so much growth in young children and that we, if we can tap into that really early and help them that that, that that they're gonna blossom and I've seen that so much in my practices. I've seen a little kids just the confidence and the parents are just so excited when their children are talking, communicating with them.
Tom Bailey 6:30
I love that and that's actually a great point to end on. So as you always want to thank you so much again for your time today and for sharing such great value with our audience.
Adriana Skuka 6:39
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
