As speech therapists, we sometimes wonder if we could be the little angel on your kid’s shoulder and whisper speech and language corrections to them throughout the day. How fast would they get to graduate from speech therapy and meet their goals?! Of course, we can humbly admit that constant reminders could feel like we’re nagging so we’ll stick to our scheduled sessions. We do believe there are ways to get the most out of our sessions and this can be affected by parents and caregivers between sessions!
What can parents or caregivers do to team up with the speech therapists to see the most progress? Here are some things to consider:
- Hype up the kids! When they feel confident and there is positive energy about working on their speech/language/feeding, then we typically see more willingness to participate, higher number of repetitions in sessions, increased feelings of accomplishment.
- Hype up the SLP! We want our clients to see us as “good guys” and not a punishment. “Go work with Ms. Lauren, then we’ll do something fun” is such a bummer for me to hear. I must interject, “hey we’re going to have fun too!” 🙂
- Follow-through with weekly recommendations. If I had two clients that are working on the same speech sounds, the one who practices a few times per week will make noticeable progress faster than another client who does not practice outside of sessions.
- Ask the SLP questions. We try to give updates often, but if you cannot be at the sessions or if you want a more thorough explanation of how sessions have been going, please ask! If you are not sure how to use a material we left for ‘speech homework’ or if we use too much speech jargon, please ask us questions so we can clarify!
- Help connect us with other service providers. It is helpful for the SLP to connect with the other service providers (PT, OT, another SLP working with them, etc), school teachers, and medical professionals (ENT, dentist, neuropsychologist, etc) for an interdisciplinary approach to help generalize skills targeted across settings. The SLP may learn about areas of concern that are not seen in-home like reacting to peers or difficulty transitioning between activities in the classroom.
- Give us updates! We want to celebrate the successes and find ways to target things that are not going well, both about communication AND personal life! You saw a bear swimming at the zoo on Saturday? Love to hear it! Grandma said she can understand almost everything you say now? Love to hear it!
- Refer us to your family and friends. We would love to expand our services to the people you know!
Thank you for being a team with your SLP!
-Lauren-
