Video Series: Speech Therapy at Home for Parents – Piece by Piece
The best way to encourage your child’s language development is with some speech therapy at home. The difference is that you are the speech therapist and that therapy happens during regular everyday activities. In the bath, around the dinner table and getting ready for bed are all great opportunities to improve language skills.
Speech therapists like to imitate those everyday activities either with the child or while playing with toys, in order to create opportunities to work on functional vocabulary that can be used right away. Now you can do speech therapy at home with your child by watching the videos with just one tip (so you don’t get overwhelmed).
We suggest learning and using just one tip at a time and then seeing that it is integrated into your day as much as possible. Remember, no matter how many times a speech therapist comes to your house, it’s never as much time as you spend with your child. You can watch the video with an example for how to use this tip when you do speech therapy at home with your child.
While providing speech therapy at home, speech language pathologists (SLPs) use a variety of techniques to teach parents to help your child learn new skills. In the videos that go along with this series, there are specific examples of how the strategies listed below can be used in day-to-day activities to help your child with his or her specific language goals.
Parents Play a Crucial Role
No two children develop alike. For the most part, that is a true statement, but there are developmental norms for language skills that children attain within general age ranges. If these skills are not developing within that time frame we might suspect that they might have a language delay or disorder that requires intervention.
The risk is if delays in communication are not treated early on, the research shows and the CDC reports that risk increases for academic difficulties in school.
Parents play a crucial role in providing speech therapy at home to their own child. This can be done by changing how you communicate with your child during everyday activities. There’s nothing special needed. day activities to help your child with his or her specific language goals.
One of the best tips to parents is that in order to learn to communicate, children need to have a need or desire to communicate. This means not anticipating their needs whenever they want something and sometimes manipulating the environment to create situations in which the child has to communicate in some way. Here is one tip that’s a parent favorite and very flexible throughout a day when parents are providing speech therapy at home for their child.
Speech Therapy at Home: Piece by Piece
This is a great strategy to use when you’re playing with toys that have many pieces such as blocks, Legos or puzzles. Don’t give your child all of the pieces at once. Hold some back and encourage communication at their level. It can be asking your child to:
- Make eye contact to receive the object
- Point to the object they want
- Request “more” with the American Sign Language (ASL) sign (watch the video to learn the sign)
- Name the object or food you want (single word)
- Use a 2 word phrase like “gimme apple”
- Use negation like “no berry”
The possibilities are endless and your speech therapist can help you target language or speech skills that are appropriate for your child.
Speech therapy at home should look like real, daily life. Your child will improve their language skills in a natural and motivating way if parents include language learning into daily activities.
Therapy Works Together – Online Speech Therapy for Children and Adults
We care about every child and adult achieving their speech, language and communication goals. You can start speech therapy online now with a certified speech language therapist. We’ll discuss your personal needs, develop an individualized treatment plan, and schedule affordable online therapy sessions online at your convenience.
