How Long is This Going to Take?

Posted on by : Kasey Wade Tags: ,

 

Today on the blog we are talking about one of the most common questions in speech therapy, long does Speech Language Therapy take. Inevitably, every single family that I work with will ask me this question before we start. And before answering this question, I think there are a few things we need to consider….

 

  1. The difference between Habilitative and Rehabilitative
    1. Rehabilitative Therapy, which is also known as “Rehab” is a term that many people are familiar with. This is the type of therapy that helps people recover a skill that they have lost due to some accident or injury (TBI, Stroke, etc.). HABILITATIVE therapy is the type of therapy we typically are doing with children, which is teaching them a brand new skill. We are building a skill from the ground up, and not just recovering a skill that has been lost, so in that sense, habilitative therapy typically takes longer than rehabilitative therapy.
  2. YOUR involvement
    1. The number one factor that I tell families that will influence their time in therapy, is their ability to work on the homework provided. If you can be an active part of the therapy session, understand how to build the homework into your daily routines, and practice more frequently and consistently, your child will be able to “graduate” from therapy faster.
  3. Unique needs of each child
    1. Every child is different, and each child has strengths and areas of growth. A skill that may take one child 1-2 weeks to learn, may take another child 2-3 years. One of our goals in therapy is to figure out how your child learns best and tailor all that we do to fit their needs and specific learning style.
  4. Root cause of the deficit or disorder
    1. If your child has a medical diagnosis (examples include: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down Syndrome, etc.) this could significantly impact their communication as well as their overall learning and development. If your child has some structural deficits such as a tongue tie, lip tie, or a cleft palate, these could also impact the length of therapy time. If your child has a pacifier, sucks their thumb or their “lovey”, these could all impact the duration of Speech Therapy. If your child has overall difficulty with motor planning, this would also be indicative of how long therapy could potentially take.
  5. Typical length of therapy
    1. If you take a look at the typical “developmental model” of service delivery for speech sounds, Speech Language Pathologists will usually follow a pattern similar to this…
      1. Isolation (sound by itself)
      2. Syllable (sound with a vowel)
      3. Word
        1. Initial
        2. Medial
        3. Final
      4. Phrase
      5. Sentence
      6. Reading
      7. Structured Conversation
      8. Carryover

And that’s just to teach ONE sound. Imagine if you have to teach multiple sounds, whew! From my experience in the clinic, even with a more mild speech sound correction, an episode of therapy would take at least 6 months. And that’s with Speech, we didn’t even touch language, feeding, AAC, auditory processing, etc.

 

So to answer the question… How long is this speech therapy going to take? Mmmmm, well I guess the best answer is it depends. Sadly, we do not have a crystal ball to tell you exactly how long it is going to take to get your child caught up to their peers. The good news is that speech language therapy does work. We do make changes! Give us a call or shoot us an email if you’d like us to come meet your child and then we might be able to give you a more tailored answer to the question, “How Long is this going to take”.

 

-Kasey-