Speech therapy doesn’t stop when your child leaves the office, but where it really counts is continually getting them to practice at home. Regardless of whether they have a stutter or struggle to make sounds correctly, a speech pathologist will most likely give your child exercises and activities to do at home to improve their condition. If you really want to see a difference, you’ll want to follow through with their directions. But can you do anything else at home to help your child?
In this article, we’ve got ten speech therapy tips you can implement at home to help your child.
When to see a speech therapist
The best way to help your child if they’re struggling with their speech is to go to a speech therapist and have them professionally diagnosed and treated for their specific problem. Here are some signs that you need to take your child to a speech therapist:
- They have difficulty pronouncing sounds and words
- They have a limited vocabulary
- They are not babbling between four to ten months old
- They have a stutter
- They don’t smile and struggle to interact with their peers
- They struggle to understand what others are saying
Get the whole family involved
It’s easy for children to feel isolated when they’ve been diagnosed with a speech or language disorder, not only because they struggle to communicate but because they know that they’re a little different to their friends and family. The one thing you should strive to do as a parent is to always ensure that your child knows they belong, and doing this can extend even into practicing their speech therapy activities and exercises. After all, it’s not going to hurt anyone to practice their speaking and language skills.
Normalize involving the whole family and make practice times fun, leaving your child feeling included and encouraged. This will spur them on to continue with their treatment plan.
Focus on the positive
As a parent, you fear the worst when you see your child struggle. While it’s so easy to see all the things that are wrong and focus on them to help your child improve, this can be quite detrimental to their progress. Instead, what will really help them is to focus on the positives! Pay attention to how they’ve improved and praise even the small victories. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t correct your child at all because they have an issue with their speech, by all means, they need to be corrected, but place a bigger emphasis on what they get right rather than what they get wrong.
Use straws
One easy way to help your child develop the muscles of their mouth to improve the clarity of their speech is to simply use straws. Yes, straws! And you don’t have to limit using straws just to drink from, but you could play games with them, too. Here are some fun activities to try with straws:
- Get a cotton ball and get them to blow through the straw to make the cotton ball move
- Get a ping pong ball, set up a “goal”, and get them to blow through the straw to try and get it through the goal
There’s no need to stick to ordinary straws, and of course, you want to stay away from single-use straws as much as possible, so opt for crazy, wavy, reusable straws to make things more interesting.
Read as much as you can
Children, as spongers, learn from everything and everyone around them, which means they learn a lot from observing you. A wonderful way to provide reinforcement for your child and encourage them to build their speech and language skills is to read to them and get them to try and read to you, too. Even if your child is too young to read, this shouldn’t stop them from trying. Just find a book with pictures and have them explain to you what they think is happening.
Limit background noise and distractions
Try to keep background noise to a minimum during times when they’re practicing and even when they’re not. We’re talking about cell phones, tablets, and TVs especially. These devices tend to take a lot of our attention, and children learn to communicate best when they are spoken to directly. The TV distracts your child and may even cause you to speak to them less.
Be patient and attentive
We all understand how busy life can get, and you might not feel like you have enough time to wait for your child to express themselves and speak clearly. However, when you consider how it impacts them, you’ll make sure you’re patient and attentive with them when communicating. Why? Getting irritated and interrupting your child when they’re trying to speak to you can give them anxiety and only worsen the issue. So, don’t interrupt, give them the time to try and figure things out for themselves.
Final thoughts
There’s so much going on in kids’ lives as it is, so encouraging them to focus on their speech therapy outside of therapy can sometimes feel like pulling teeth. Remember that you have to be involved in the process as much as they do if you want to see results. That’s why it’s super important to keep on working on their exercises and activities at home and implement them in engaging and fun ways while always being patient. We hope these tips work for you, but are there any others that you’ve found to be useful, too?
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