So, why am I sharing these thoughts about my experience with my child? (shared in part one). For me, delivering Speech Bubbles has become an opportunity to create a space where all forms of communication are valid.

However, all the children are there because they would benefit from small group work to build their communication skills. So, labels are put down and children can be the creative, complex, and developing minds that they are. 

This works because Speech Bubbles recognises the components of communication as a core principle of guiding the work. When we consider communication in this way, without the pyramid or the tree, we can recognise the journey to effective language and communication isn't necessarily linear. We are all made up of components of communication - with strengths in different areas, whatever labels we might have to hold outside the session. The children are united through play and have an opportunity to develop and celebrate their communication skills through participation and taking it in turns to author a story.

That is 24 weeks to give children time to learn that being able to communicate confidently doesn’t mean being the loudest person in the room. It can be positive body language, being good at listening, sharing ideas, taking turns, directing, working as a team, developing empathy, and so much more. Consequently, they see their own growth and success reflected back to them when the group acts out the story they take turns to author each week.

Every week a Speech Bubbles session is themed around a story one of the children has authored. Speech Bubbles champions linguistic justice and there is careful attention to scribing it exactly as the child delivered it. Consequently, the stories can jump around in grammar, tense, length and sometimes perceived logic, and, as tempting as it is to do, we don't change this. Some told to me, in essence, were a list of actions. However, this commitment to author the story as the child told it honours their ideas and their intelligence. I have received reports about my son, stating that his babble was non-directional / purposeful. Maybe it's my mother lion instincts kicking in, but to reduce his sounds to nothing misses the fact they can often be a sound of joy in the moment, or an acknowledgement I have come to pick him up from school. It reduces his intelligence. I think the process of collecting and sharing the children’s stories does the same thing - it honours the joy of the moment, of the idea and their intelligence at that moment in time. I actually remember being quite surprised one week that a jumping cucumber created so much joy and discussion for the whole group in the story square. Again, by working in this way, the children are building a shared commitment to each other - to tell each other's stories and honour each other's ideas, just as they are - so we create space for all voices to exist together.