Speech therapists are an invaluable resource for children with communication problems. As a parent, it’s important to remain in contact with your child’s speech therapist and make sure you’re on the same page regarding your child’s progress and goals.
In addition to making regular visits to a speech therapist, parents of children who are undergoing speech therapy can implement daily activities at home to encourage their children’s development.
Prompting your child is one way you can help them develop their skills. For example, you could give your child a verbal prompt by asking them open-ended questions such as “Can you tell me about what happened at school today?” Providing visual prompts is also helpful; you could show your child pictures of everyday objects or people they know, and ask them to describe what they see.
When teaching your child new words, have them repeat the word after you’ve said it. You could also have them put a hand over their mouth and say the word again, but without letting any air come out. This will help strengthen their diaphragm as well as their pronunciation of the word.
It’s true that there are many speech therapists out there offering a wide range of services, but there is one in particular that stands out from the rest: Speech Therapy at Home. This company has helped hundreds of children with their speech and language development, and they can help yours too.
Speech Therapy at Home provides a wide variety of services including speech therapy, audiology testing, and counseling services. They also offer free consultations to see if they’re right for you. With over 20 years of experience, they’ve seen it all – from toddlers struggling through teething pains to adults needing help with pronunciation problems due to hearing loss or stroke damage. If you’ve got any questions about how speech therapy can help your child, this is the place to go.
Get the child involved in their therapy. The more excited they are about therapy, the more likely they are to have fun and keep up with it. You can get them involved in their exercises, helping to come up with new games or activities and asking them what they’d like to try next.
Practice exercises regularly, and make them fun. If you’re practicing a specific technique, like repeating words after your child, remember that this is not about correcting them—you should be having fun with the exercises, so try to practice regularly with your child when they’re in a good mood so they learn to associate speech therapy with positive emotions.
Get creative. There are tons of games you can play with your child that double as speech therapy exercises. For example, you could play a game where you both take turns saying a list of items around the house (for example “banana, apple, orange…”) until one person forgets an item on the list—the other person has to say “Out” when that happens.
Speech therapy is an excellent option for children who have speech and language problems in order to help them learn how to communicate more easily with others. Children may need speech therapy if they have difficulty saying certain words or phrases, are not understood by others, or do not understand what others say to them.