5 Easy Tricks For Speech Therapy At Home

In the Unit­ed States, there are many chil­dren ages three to 17 diag­nosed with some sort of speech dis­or­der. Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics, 7.7 per­cent of these chil­dren in the Unit­ed States strug­gle with issues that are relat­ed to swal­low­ing, voice, lan­guage, or speech. Indeed, speech dis­abil­i­ty is a severe issue. Some par­ents might not con­sid­er this as some­thing seri­ous. How­ev­er, chil­dren with speech dis­or­ders and are not treat­ed ear­ly can hin­der their day-to-day rou­tine until adult­hood. This can impact their job appli­ca­tion, social life, and oth­er aspects in their entire adulthood. Par­ents should be all ears when it comes to speech dis­or­ders. Some caus­es of speech dis­abil­i­ty are:

• Emo­tion­al stress
• Child­hood trau­ma or infection
• Sup­pres­sion
• Genet­ic abnormalities
• Brain or nerve damage
• Issues in mus­cles or bones

Once you notice your chil­dren hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty com­mu­ni­cat­ing, it’s rec­om­mend­ed to address these issues as soon as possible. You can enroll your chil­dren in vir­tu­al speech ther­a­py class­es to ensure that this issue doesn’t go on until adulthood.

On top of online speech ther­a­py ses­sions, you can still prac­tice speech ther­a­py at home. Here are some ways on how you can devel­op your children’s speech even at home. 1- Ask Open-End­ed Questions Some chil­dren who have dif­fi­cul­ty in con­vers­ing can become shy because they can’t express them­selves. It’s bet­ter to avoid this and encour­age them always to com­mu­ni­cate, espe­cial­ly when at home. Try to strike a con­ver­sa­tion with your chil­dren, even if it means ask­ing them sim­ple questions. To get them to talk more, try to ask more open-end­ed ques­tions. Instead of ask­ing them “Yes or No” ques­tions, try to ask ques­tions that need more detailed answers. This way, they can try to explain them­selves. Please cor­rect them and guide them when­ev­er they’re speaking. Also, try to ask ques­tions that have no right or wrong answers. Some chil­dren might be scared of answer­ing for fear of giv­ing the wrong answers. And this will bring down their self-confidence. Assure them that the ques­tions don’t have a right or wrong answer. Ask them ques­tions like:

• What is your favorite food, and why?
• What do you think about the trees outside?
• Why do you like to play your favorite games?
• Who is the per­son you look up to the most?
• Why do you think school is important?

Try to ask some ques­tions every day and spend some time sit­ting down so he can ver­bal­ize the ideas in his head. Some­times, dis­trac­tions aren’t good when a kid is try­ing to explain him­self. So, make sure that you talk with him face to face with­out any oth­er distractions.

2- Listen Carefully

As men­tioned, it’s bet­ter to talk with your chil­dren face to face when prac­tic­ing speech ther­a­py at home. This will give them the impres­sion that you care about their answers. When­ev­er you’re doing some house­hold chores while talk­ing to your chil­dren, they might think that they don’t have to give a seri­ous answer because you’re not giv­ing 100 per­cent of your atten­tion to them. Always look at them in the eye and val­i­date their respons­es. Try to com­fort them when­ev­er they’re hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time explain­ing themselves. The worse thing that can hap­pen when doing speech ther­a­py at home is when your chil­dren are all-out in express­ing them­selves and you’re busy doing the dish­es. This doesn’t show that you’re giv­ing them 100 per­cent of your time and sup­port in help­ing them get better.

3- Make Them Read More

Read­ing offers a myr­i­ad of ben­e­fits. There is also a cor­re­la­tion between read­ing and speak­ing. Read­ing a lot helps us improve our speech and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. This is because we get more famil­iar with the sounds, gram­mat­i­cal errors, spelling pat­terns, and more. When you let your chil­dren read more, you’re intro­duc­ing them to dif­fer­ent writ­ing tones. This will enable them to gar­ner ideas on cer­tain sit­u­a­tions and will impact the way they express themselves. Make them read their favorite books. As much as pos­si­ble, let them read the same books over and over again until they famil­iar­ize the vocab­u­lar­ies. Read­ing also helps widen your children’s vocabulary. The more words they know, the more they know how to express their ideas. Also, while read­ing, you can always ask them ques­tions to engage in con­ver­sa­tions. Ask them about the pic­tures or ask them what they think about the sit­u­a­tions, char­ac­ters, or scenes.

4- Do Speech Therapy Exercises

Make it a habit to do speech ther­a­py exer­cis­es with your kid at home. The advan­tage of doing these at home is that it won’t seem like a “class” or some­thing mandatory. You can cre­ate games that involve prac­tic­ing their speech. For exam­ple, you can try to show them pic­ture cards of ani­mals. Once you show them a par­tic­u­lar ani­mal, you can ask them to imi­tate the ani­mal sound. There are many speech ther­a­py activ­i­ties you can do with your chil­dren. Always make it engag­ing. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a two-way street. Also, nev­er rep­ri­mand your chil­dren if they make a mis­take, as this might dis­cour­age them. Instead, cor­rect them with a pos­i­tive note.

5- Make It Fun

Last but not least, always make your speech ther­a­py at home fun and enjoy­able. A child has a very short atten­tion span. They can eas­i­ly get dis­tract­ed and can only focus for a few min­utes. How­ev­er, if you make the activ­i­ties fun, they will try their best to join in on the fun. If you also ensure that you engage them every step of the way, they will like­ly focus their atten­tion on you or on the activ­i­ty. What­ev­er you do, always spend speech ther­a­py ses­sions at home with a smile and some laugh­ter. This way, your child will nev­er feel like it’s “home­work.”

Conclusion

Speech ther­a­py is cru­cial to improve and devel­op your child’s speech dis­or­der. Whether some­one young or old has speech dis­abil­i­ties, it’s rec­om­mend­ed to act on it imme­di­ate­ly. Please don’t take this issue for grant­ed, as it can have a grave impact on a person’s day-to-day life. Eliza Brooks has writ­ten this arti­cle, Eliza is a pas­sion­ate blog­ger and she loves to write about per­son­al­i­ty devel­op­ment, men­tal and phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties, and ways to over­come them effec­tive­ly. She is cur­rent­ly work­ing with Ver­boso, which offers online speech ther­a­py for chil­dren to improve their speak­ing skills.