- Hey everybody, I have a very special guest again with me,
my friend Catherine is here to talk with us
about how important parental involvement
is in speech therapy.
So stay tuned.
(gentle music)
So like I said, I have an amazing and wonderful guest,
my friend Catherine is here to talk with us,
and she is a Speech-Language Pathologist,
and we've done other videos together.
So if you haven't checked those out,
make sure you check those out.
Do that first.
- Yup.
- But today we're talking about how important
parental involvement is.
- Yes.
- Because I know we spoke about this a little before,
and I know it's kind of hard sometimes
for parents to recognize if something
could be wrong with their child.
And also recognize that it's at no fault of their own.
- Absolutely.
- But there are things they can do to make it better.
- Yes.
- And to make it heal faster.
Just like in therapy, a lot of my clients,
I have them do work at home because it helps
them and we're relearning new techniques.
- Mhmm. Carry over.
- Is it similar? Yeah.
- I'm all about the carry over.
All about it.
Yeah, absolutely, you know.
Of course, it all depends on what the child is working on.
What their deficits are, what their strengths are,
it really all depends.
A lot of times parents feel that,
it's what they've told me, that's why I know this,
that they don't really have time after school,
and after the after-school activities,
to sit with their kid after homework, and now
to be doing speech-language activities.
It doesn't necessarily have to be that.
Yes, granted, we like to give out worksheets
and things like that to take home and to practice,
to learn words that need to be drilled,
100% those do exist.
But a lot of times it's very easy to just
do things around the home.
And, if you ask, if your child is receiving speech therapy,
do not hesitate to ask your speech therapist.
Like, "Hey, what did you guys do on this session?"
Blah, blah, blah, great.
What can I do to help at home?
- Okay.
- And it's really easy things.
For example, so generally in speech therapy
what we work on is expressive language,
which is the ability to communicate your wants and needs.
- Uh huh.
- And also receptive language,
so it's things that you can understand,
from readings, from conversation,
things that you, information that you retain.
- Okay.
- So let's say I'm working with
a little kid on following directions.
One to two step related and unrelated directions.
- Okay.
- That'll be a goal.
So that's what we work on.
That doesn't mean mom has to go home
and sit with him at a desk, and make him do directions
and draw lines and do worksheets,
it doesn't have to be that way.
You could do something like during,
if the child likes to help you during laundry.
"Hey, little Billy, give Mommy the sock."
He gives it, boom.
One step direction practice.
- Perfect.
- "Now, give Mommy the black sock and the white shirt."
Boom, you're following two step directions
and you're addressing colors.
"Show me the hat and then the shoe."
- Mhmm.
- Now he's following directions,
he's working on his receptive
- Understanding what a hat and shoe is.
- Yeah, clothing, the differences.
And he's pointing, he's identifying.
So many different things that you can do.
Or even if you go to the park with your child
and, "Let me see you go up the slide,
down the slide, and then on the swings."
Okay Mom.
- Uh huh, which they love to do anyway.
- Which they love to do anyway.
But just have them do it in the order that you say.
- Uh huh, interesting.
- And that's working on it right away.
Parental involvement is key.
You absolutely need to carry over the lessons
that the speech therapist does in the class.
I mean, in the classroom,
- Yeah.
- in the therapy room, wherever it may be.
You have to carry over the lessons at home
or else the progress will be,
it'll be there, but it'll be slow.
- Yeah, it's hard.
- And not as effective.
It gets harder.
- Yeah, especially if you're only seeing them...
If my clients don't do their homework that I give them,
or work on things that I'm having them work on,
and I only see them once a week,
we're moving but it's very slowly.
- And you can always tell.
- Yeah.
- You always have those parents like,
"Oh yes, we sit every day and we do and do",
and I'm like really?
Well, he's worse than last week so.
- Somehow we're going backwards.
- Clearly not.
Yeah, so parental involvement
and being honest about parental involvement is huge.
So, I mean, we all have lives,
- Yes.
- We all have busy schedules,
it's impossible to do all these activities with your kid
every single time you're with them,
every time they speak you're gonna address certain issues,
it's not realistic, it's not natural.
The child's gonna feel pressured,
they're gonna start becoming like,
they're gonna resist therapy.
They're gonna resist that whole aspect of it
and you don't want that.
- Yeah.
- So just incorporate these things.
And again, I gave two examples,
your speech therapist can give you twenty thousand more.
- And I think the most important thing is also,
like remember that you're not alone.
- Yeah.
- That's very common.
- Yes, speech impediments and speech-language therapy
in general is very, very common.
Just to give a few statistics,
between six and eight million people
- Wow.
- In the United States have some
sort of speech-language impairment.
- Wow.
- Okay, about three million people stutter,
huge, that's a huge, huge thing.
- And I did a video on that if you haven't
heard about it, you can click here and watch it.
- There you go.
- But I've got friends that are adults
that still struggle with stuttering.
- Yeah, and when speaking of children,
between six and eight percent of children, little kids,
have some sort of speech-language disability as well.
So, your kid is not the only one.
Believe me, when I go to a school,
I don't go for one child for a half-hour session.
I see ten kids.
You're not gonna be the only one.
And also, when the therapy,
I also want to point out,
I have a lot of parents have expressed to me
that they feel that their child
feels like they're being kind of secluded.
- Oh, like pulled out of class to do this.
- Pulled out of class or brought to the side.
That they feel like they're different.
I can promise you that that is very rarely if never the case
because when I go into these day cares,
and I go into these schools,
I get charged
- Oh, I'm sure.
- By all the kids, "What toys did you bring?
Can I play? Can I play?"
They don't look at the child as, oh,
something's wrong with him,
especially when they're three, four years old.
- They think he's getting special attention.
- Yeah, they're not saying,
"Oh something's wrong with that kid."
Pointing fingers.
No, they're thinking, "Wow, somebody's coming over
to him specifically or her specifically,
bringing all these cool toys that
we don't get to play with."
like, "No fair."
- They're jealous.
They're jealous.
So it's never seen as a negative thing to their peers.
It's always like, "I wanna play too and I can't."
- That's good to know, 'cause people do worry.
I could think that I might feel that as a parent.
- Exactly.
- Maybe they're not getting to play
as much as the other kids or,
they feel like they're different.
I don't want them to feel different, you know.
- Be open to it, 100%.
Be open to therapist suggestions,
even if they seem kind of weird and outlandish,
just keep an open mind because
all that we want to do is to help you and help your child,
and for your child to get out of speech therapy
as fast as possible.
We don't want you around for ten years.
- Yeah.
- We wanted to do it, do our job,
show that we did an amazing job
and on your way you go.
- Perfect.
- So the faster we can address everything,
and the more open parents are
to our suggestions, the better.
You guys are definitely not alone in this.
- Wonderful, well thank you so much for
- Of course.
- Taking the time to share all this wonderful
information with all my viewers.
And I will put the links to the other videos
so you don't wanna miss out on those.
And hopefully we can do this again.
- Absolutely.
- See you next time.
(gentle music)