Speech Therapy at Home: Activities that Will Help your Child Improve Speech Skills

The first few years of your kid’s life are the most critical throughout his or her learning milestones. This is when they learn how to walk, talk, and communicate. However, children who are as unique as they are may also struggle from speech development, especially toddlers with the following conditions:

• Hearing loss caused by an ear infection.
• Oral impairment involving the child’s tongue, the roof of the mouth, and other parts of the mouth.
• Intellectual disability
• Autism
• Cerebral palsy

Speech therapy is one of the effective ways to improve the child’s speech skills, especially children who are struggling with speech delay. For this reason, it is important to consult a medical professional or speech specialist or speech-language pathologist to ask for proper diagnosis and intervention. Also, at Speech and Sound Clinic – a reliable resource for parents that needs additional advice and tips for toddlers and kids with speech delay – you can find valuable tips on how to improve your child’s speech development.

And if you want to extend the speech therapy at home, you should consider these following tips:

#1: Careful reading of books with illustration

All toddlers are imaginative, whether he or she is suffering from speech delay or any kind of health problems. If you want your child to remember words and phrases, you need to read a book with illustrations to help them understand the meaning of the word. Also, make sure to read the book slowly and clearly.

Also, try to explain the illustration that highlights the words you want your child to remember, pronounce, and understand.

#2: Encourage positive reinforcement

Positive reinforcement in learning will help your child remember what was taught to him or her. So, if you want to extend speech therapy at home, you have to think of fun ways to help him or her to remember the words; as well as, understand it.

Always practice power wordplay such as “great job”, “well done”, “perfect”, and more. This will encourage the child to read words and remember how they should be used.

#3: Encourage two-way communication

Speech therapy at home can be demanding, especially when you are trying to practice two-way communication, where you will have to wait for your child’s response; on the other hand, the speech exercise is fulfilling when your child was able to understand each word you have said.

So, whenever possible, encourage two-way communication.

#4: Do not rush

Let your child learn the words at their pace. Do not rush them when learning new few words. Instead, follow their lead. Do not immediately correct them when they make mistakes pronouncing a word; instead, think of fun ways on how to pronounce words. Through this, it will encourage confidence.

Final Thoughts

If you have a child struggling with speech delay, you have to be patient. Stay calm and find out what is best for your child with a speech problem. Talk to your child’s physician if you need to know more about speech delay and how it should be managed.

For additional details on this, try to visit the Speech and Sound Clinic’s website.