As parents, we are stretched so thin. We have work, school drop-offs, pick-ups, homework and meetings, afternoon and weekend sports and activities, not to mention housework, meal planning, grocery shopping. The list is endless.
So what do you mean I need to also be doing home practise for speech pathology?
I understand! I am a Mum to three gorgeous children myself. I want to know that the time and effort I am putting into their speech pathology, occupational therapy, and psychology homework is going to be beneficial to them and worth my time!
So, Why Do Speech Pathologists Give Home Practise Activities?
Making changes to your child’s communication skills can take time. Like most activities, the more we practise them, the easier and more automatic they become. It’s like learning to drive a car. When we first start learning to drive, we have to think hard about each individual part of driving; making sure we look both ways, pressing the accelerator, slowly pressing the brake, indicating, defensive driving, and watching the traffic lights. It’s hard and takes a lot of brain space at the beginning, but, we practise, and now, for most of us who have been driving a while, we can get in the car without thinking and drive home or to work without thinking about actually HOW to drive. It has become automatic.
It’s the same with children’s communication. When children learn to make a new sound, for example, it takes a lot of thought and effort to remember the ‘new way’ of talking. But the more they practise the quicker they will progress until they are using that new sound automatically in conversation. Remember the car analogy. If you drive once a fortnight or once a week, it is going to take you a lot longer to become automatic in your driving, than if you practise a little bit every day.
It’s not that they won’t learn the new sound if you don’t do homework, but the more practise you do, the quicker and more automatically your child will learn, and the shorter time you and your child will have to commit to therapy.
At A Growing Understanding, our vision is to grow the understanding and abilities of every family to allow your child’s communication to flourish. We strive to ensure we are working with your family’s individual speech therapy goals, routines and time availability. We want to collaboratively come up with homework or home practise activities that fits within your family.
To help you get your head around implementing home practise, I wanted to share of my tips and how we help you incorporate practise into your daily home-life (without it feeling like extra work or a burden).
Five Things to Help with Home Practise:
Shorter, more frequent practise is better
Research tells us that short bursts of practise more regularly are more productive than one long session. So before you think of home practise being a time drain and always boring and paper-based – think again! Your child can even achieve their goals quickly by doing lots of little 5 minute activities frequently throughout the week!
Make it individual
We want to collaborate with you not only to determine what goals you are wanting to achieve but HOW you can achieve them quickly. We want to work with your family to think about the WHEN and WHAT of homework and how it would fit within your week and your family.
For example, would your pre-school-aged child feel special doing their speech pathology homework at the same time as their older sibling and would like more paper-based activities? Does your school-aged child love animals and homework could look more like a conversation while they feed and play with their pets before school in the morning? Maybe your adolescent loves playing Minecraft or Fortnite and we might use these games in therapy and during home practise to help them reach their goals.
Your speech pathologist can help you work out what will motivate your child to finish their home practise and how that will fit into your family and home-life.
Make home practise fit within your already established routines
Most families have routines, even if they are loose routines. Some of my family’s routines are always eating dinner together at the dinner table and talking about our day, or playing little conversational games (you can check out one of my blogs on that), reading a book together at the end of the night before bedtime, sorting and hanging up clothes before they go into bedrooms (so they don’t get stuffed under the kid’s beds!) and packing their school lunch boxes the night before so we aren’t rushed in the morning.
You and your speech pathologist can work out what routines you already have and how we can insert your home practise into those routines.
For us for example, my daughter does speech pathology. While her two older siblings are doing their school homework, we sit down and do some paper-based practise together. Then later in the night before bed, we incorporate further practise while reading. It is a daily practise that takes no more time than I would already have spent with her.
When she was in pre-school, we also worked on her speech sounds, so we make up silly games to practise specific words. When she was younger and working on the ‘c’ sound, we made up a game of finding all the police cars when we were driving. She would call out “cops” and I would give her feedback on her sounds (e.g. Wow! What a great ‘c’ sound in cops! Or “Hang on! Where is a top?”). When she was able to say the ‘c’ in cops a bit more consistently, we then made up a “cops be cool!” phrase and she would call that out and I could give her feedback on if she got the ‘c’ sounds correct or not (tops be tool was very cute!)
What games could you make up with your speech pathologist to practise at home? Remember to think about the goals your child is working on so the practise and games are relevant.
Use what you already have
You don’t need to go and spend big setting up the home practise activities! Your speech pathologist can help you to think of different ways to use the activities, routines or games you already have to do homework. It won’t cost you anything – unless you want it to!
For example, if your child is working on getting smooth speech, use the books, puzzles or toys you already have to practise their talking. If your child is learning about categories and how words relate to each other, maybe they could help you write a shopping list and sort items into their categories (e.g. fruits, vegetables). And finally, if your child is learning about retelling events that happened during the day, you could watch their favourite Netflix or YouTube show and then say or write a retell together about that show.
Have Fun!
The most important thing when doing home practise with your child is having fun! Your child will learn more effectively and quickly if they are interested in what they are doing and having fun!
Incorporate your child’s interests with their home practise and make it fun. Remember, there are no set rules about what you can and can’t do with home practise, but consistency is key and if your child is having while they are doing it, they will be well on their way to achieving their goals!
Do you have any tried and tested tips or special home practise activities?
