6 Easy Tips For Speech Therapy At Home (part 1)

This post is all about speech therapy at home

Have you been wondering how to do speech therapy at home? Looking for speech therapy at home activities? If so, you have arrived at the right place! As a speech-language pathologist for 13+ years, I have worked in many different settings, including nursing homes, elementary schools, private clinics, in post-acute rehab with traumatic brain injury, and even at the barn using horses to supplement my treatment sessions!

In this post you will learn quick and effective tips to supplement your child's or loved one's speech therapy at home! By using additional tips and tricks learned here, your loved ones have the enhanced opportunity to overcome communication challenges, making both of your lives easier.

Side Note: Helping to facilitate speech therapy at home is the missing puzzle piece to making great strides. The fancy term for carrying over skills learned in speech therapy to other settings is "generalization." It holds a lot of weight and importance. Without generalizing skills learned to other settings the time spent in the therapy room is not valuable.

This blog post will show you effective ways to practice speech therapy at home! This is not meant to replace therapy but to supplement your speech sessions and empower you to be!

This post is about Speech Therapy At Home.

#1 Tip For Speech Therapy At Home: Use a mirror!

When practicing speech sounds at home, it is helpful to use a mirror! Make sure the mirror is big enough to feature you and your loved one! This helps you to be able to give a clear visual model of the articulators (tongue, lips, teeth, cheeks) and for your loved one to have visual feedback from their own faces in addition to yours. Using the mirror in the morning or evening during teeth brushing time works well!

#2 Tips For Speech Therapy At Home: Make It Fun!

Speech therapy at home should be fun, not a chore! Set aside 2-15 minutes a few times a week to practice a particular skill. Associate these practice times with something enjoyable! This could be a walking in the park, playing a game, using a special toy allocated for speech therapy time, making a simple science project or following a brownie recipe.

Here's a fun reward chart to use with your loved one at home (no e-mail required and immediate delivery)

Speech Stars Chart

#3 Tips for Speech Therapy At Home: Short and Sweet

Speech therapy at home should be administered in "short and sweet" sessions. It is not reasonable to plan multiple hours daily to dedicate to this, unless you have endless amounts of time and patience!

Also, if the person needing speech therapy is able to sustain attention for extended periods of time it may be worth looking into some type of independent practice using ipad apps or specific worksheets targeting their needs. Keep the sessions to a minimum and repeat weekly. Sometimes all it takes is for your loved one to be held accountable...or understand that you are holding them to the same high standards at their speech therapist. This will motivate them to continue to work on the skill at home.

#4 Tips for Speech Therapy At Home: Positive and Specific Praise

When practicing speech therapy at home, don't focus on what is going wrong. Focus on what is going right! Even if the session is "not working" and the goals are not being met, there is always something to praise. Let's go over some examples:

• I appreciate how hard you are trying right now.

• I love the effort that you are putting forth to reach your goals.

• I am inspired by how hard you are working right now.

If they are meeting their goals, stay away from "good job." Be more specific. Let's go over some examples:

• You made the "s" sound at the beginning of the word snake really well!

• Great job using 5 words to make a complete sentence!

• Nice work using your strategy of association to recall that word!

#5 Tips for Speech Therapy At Home: Two Tries And Move On

When practicing speech therapy at home, it is easy for both parties to get frustrated. Here is a structure I want to provide to PREVENT this from happening. Remember the part about speech therapy at home being fun? Repeatedly requesting for your loved one to do something they are struggling with is not going to end in good results. Provide two chances for them to get it right and then MOVE RIGHT ALONG. Go to the next thing, circle back another time, another day and if you are still having trouble it is best to consult with your speech therapist on different ways to facilitate the goal.

Sidenote: This is one of the most common reasons I see students becoming behavioral in the classroom. The teachers will accidently overstimulate the student by verbally requesting the same thing multiple times and the student responds poorly. It's better to reduce verbal cues when working with loved ones and use gestures, written cues and provide a lot of time between asking questions and waiting for a response.

#6 Tips for Speech Therapy At Home: Cueing Your Loved One

This is what not to do (if this is you don't worry we provide tips to modify this). John Sit! John move your tongue up to make the D sound. John higher up. Move your tongue up. See mine. Move it up John. Look John. Move your tongue up. Remember the two times and move on we talked about earlier? Try this (let's pretend we are trying to faciliate the "d" sound:

Sit with John in front of the mirror so he can see your face and his own.

John to make the D sound move your tongue up behind your front teeth.

Tap it and move it down like this.

Your Turn.

If John is making a mistake you can correct him two times. The next cues should be different to verbal ones. Now this time instead of using words to cue him point with your finger to your mouth and show him again.

We have used a gesture (pointing with our finger) and also a visual cue (our mouth in the mirror) to aid in Johns ability to understand how to produce the D sound. Gestures and visual models are two great additions to add to the toolbox!

Thanks for stopping by to read about Speech Therapy At Home.