How Do I Do Speech At Home?
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I've asked thousands of parents what their biggest question is about speech. By far, the most common response sounds something like this...
"How do I do it?"
So that's what we're going to talk about. Consider this your Getting Started Guide.
My goal is that when you finish reading this post, you'll feel confident in your ability to support your child's development at home and know the next steps to help you move forward in your speech journey.
But before we get started with how to do speech at home, I want to address a common concern...
Can I do speech at home?
The short answer is YES. I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't believe parents were fully capable of working on speech with their kids.
But I know a lot of parents are worried that they don't know enough or they're not qualified to help their child with speech, and because of this, they believe their child can only work on speech with a professional therapist.
Now don't get me wrong, working with a professional therapist is great if that option's available to you.
But even if your child is seeing a speech therapist, you should still be doing speech at home.
Here's my personal (& professional) opinion... one or two hours of therapy a week is not enough for kids to make the best progress possible.
Kids need consistent, daily practice towards their speech goals.
The good news is that you don't need to triple your monthly speech payments and convince your therapist to work with your child every day (which is never gonna happen), and you don't need to sacrifice the effectiveness of your child's therapy time either.
Why?
Parents can do speech therapy just as effectively as professional therapists.
It may sound crazy, but it's true. And you don't need to take my word for it.
There was a meta-analysis (a high-quality type of research study) by Roberts and Kaiser, researchers from Northwestern and Vanderbilt, on this topic.
They looked at the effects of "parent-implemented language interventions".
This is basically a method of providing speech therapy (the language intervention) where the parents are taught how to work on speech skills and then they're the ones who implement their child's treatment plan.
In other words, the parents are the ones who are actually doing the therapy work with their child.
In the study, they looked at the impact these interventions had on the language skills of children between 18 months and 5 years old who had both primary and secondary language delays (meaning kids who only had language delays and kids who had other disabilities as well).
And here's what they found...
- Parent-implemented interventions had significant positive impacts on both receptive and expressive language skills (and this was true for kids with and without other disabilities)
- Parent-implemented interventions were just as effective as the interventions provided by professional therapists
- Parent-implemented interventions were even more effective than the therapist interventions for receptive language (understanding words) and expressive syntax (creating sentences)
So the takeaway here...
You can do speech therapy with your child. And that therapy can be just as effective (if not more so) as if they were working with a professional speech therapist.
Alright, now that you're on board with the idea that you can do speech at home, let's talk about what that actually looks like.
How do I do speech at home?
The specifics of what daily practice looks like is going to vary significantly for each child and family.
There are so many factors to take into consideration. Things like...
- Your child's strengths
- Areas where your child needs support
- Other therapies or services your child is receiving
- Where your child spends their day (home, childcare, school, etc)
- Your family's goals and priorities
- Your child's interests
And so much more.
But regardless of what the specifics look like...
Whether you're working on first words, articulation, apraxia, or stuttering...
Whether your focus is on speaking, signing, or using AAC...
Whether you're taking conventional or holistic approaches...
There are 5 steps you need to follow.
1. Evaluation
If you want to know exactly what your child needs support with, have a clear plan for supporting those needs, and be able to identify and track progress...
You need to start with an evaluation.
Ideally this evaluation will include a screening or full evaluation from a speech therapist.
They'll be able to do comprehensive, standardized testing and help you create a plan based on where your child is at.
The evaluation process can be tricky, especially if your child has more complex needs, so if a professional speech evaluation is available to you, I recommend taking advantage of it.
However, if you're stuck on a waitlist, waiting for insurance approval, or for whatever reason don't have access to a speech therapist, you'll want to start with a home assessment.
I have to add the disclaimer that a home assessment isn't a replacement for a professional speech evaluation...
But it can give you a good starting point and allow you to support your child's development more effectively while you're waiting to see a therapist.
In fact, you may want to do this even if you've had a professional evaluation... sometimes these give a better picture of your child's abilities than standardized testing does.
A simple way to assess your child's speech skills at home is by looking at milestones that are typical for their age.
If you need extra support with this, we have a Developmental Milestones Guide for early language skills (0-5 years old) and an Articulation Development Home Assessment to help you get started.
2. Goals
Having clear, specific goals is not only necessary for tracking progress, but also for ensuring that your practice time stays focused on the right things.
When you've created clear goals, it's easy to see (and celebrate!) when your child makes progress, even when that progress is just a baby step.
In fact, you want to make sure that your goals aren't more than a few baby steps above where your child is at currently (this is why it's so important to evaluate first, so you know your starting point).
Working on speech skills can feel like a long, slow process sometimes, so noticing and appreciating those little wins can help you stay motivated and know that you're headed in the right direction.
Goals also make practice time simple and more effective.
You could spend hundreds of hours using really great speech strategies with your kiddo, but if you're not working on the right skills, you may not see any improvement.
But, when you have specific goals, you know exactly what you need to focus on when you start practicing.
3. Strategies
Now that you know where your child is at and what to work on, it's time to learn some strategies for teaching those skills.
A lot of people jump straight to this step... but it's really important to make sure you've taken care of the foundational pieces in Steps 1 & 2 first.
There are lots of ways to learn these strategies...
- If you're working with a speech therapist, hopefully they've already been teaching you the strategies they're using during sessions with your child so you can use them at home. If they haven't, ask them to!
- Search for whatever skill you're working on plus speech therapy (e.g. joint attention + speech therapy). You'll find tutorial videos, articles, activities... there's all sorts of good stuff out there.
- Follow speech therapists on YouTube, social media, or podcasts. There are lots of wonderful people sharing their knowledge and experience.
- Take a course or training on the topic you're working on. Personally, I'm partial to our programs, but it's important to find the best fit for your family. You could even dive super deep into a specific topic with trainings created for speech therapists (there's no reason parents can't take those too).
In some cases, you may find just a couple strategies recommended for a topic...
Other times you may find more options than you can keep up with.
Either way is okay. Pick one to start. That's all you need right now.
And if you find some really great resources that you think may come in handy later, save those links (you may want them in Step 5).
4. Implementation
Now, finally, you get to start working on your child's speech goals.
If you completed everything in the previous 3 steps, this part should feel pretty simple.
That doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
This is where you're applying the strategy you learned and using it to teach your child a speech skill during play or daily routines...
It's a lot of work, some of it might be challenging for your child, and some may even be challenging for you as you're getting started with this process...
But it doesn't have to be complicated.
The goal is to keep speech practice fun (for both of you!) and to create a routine you can follow consistently.
Daily practice (even 10-15 minutes!) is where the magic really happens.
5. Reassess, Update, Investigate
On to our final step.
I can't make a lot of promises about what your speech journey will look like... but one thing I can guarantee is that it will not all go perfectly according to plan.
Which means that all of the fabulous work you did in Steps 1-4 is really more like a rough draft.
Personally, I like to look at that as a positive... it means that there's no pressure to complete each step perfectly, and no need to worry when you need to change things up (because that's absolutely going to happen).
The first part of this step is to Reassess two things...
- Where is your child at? You want to find out whether or not they've made progress towards their goal. This doesn't need to be another full evaluation, just a quick assessment of the specific skill you've been working on.
- How is your current plan working out? If you've been struggling to practice consistently, your child hates the activities you're using, you haven't seen progress towards goals, or your childcare/work schedule/school schedule/something else in life changed and speech practice is feeling overwhelming, hard, frustrating, or any other feeling that isn't fun... it's time to make some changes.
Once you've finished Reassessing, it's time to Update your speech plan...
This means modifying anything you did in the previous steps that needs a little change.
If your goals need to be easier or more challenging... change them.
If your strategy isn't working out super well... jump back to one of those saved pages or do another search and find another one.
If anything else about your practice time isn't working out how you'd like... try something new.
And this brings us to the final (and only optional) stage of this process...
Investigate.
This part won't always be needed.
Sometimes it's really easy to tell why something isn't working out...
And it's totally normal for there to be some (or a lot of) trial and error...
But other times, you need to be a bit of a detective and start to dig a little deeper.
This is especially true if you've gone through the Reassess and Update steps a few times and keep running into the same problem.
Investigating might looks like getting a new perspective on your plan (our Facebook community is always available to help you with that)
- Asking a friend for a new perspective on what's keeping you stuck (our Facebook community is always available to help you with that)
- Talking to your speech therapist about your concerns or ideas
- Looking at holistic or alternative approaches that other parents have had success with
- Considering how lifestyle factors like screen time might be impacting your child's speech
- Talking to your child's doctor about referrals (like seeing an audiologist for a hearing test) to rule out or address potential root causes of delays
As you go through this process, be open to making changes, exploring new possibilities, and playing around with different ideas, strategies, activities, or approaches until you find what works best for your child and your family.
And as always, we're here to support you through our programs and communities every step of the way.
Hi, I'm Emily
Founder of Moms Teach Speech
Emily helps parents who have kids with speech delays support their children's development with a holistic, functional, family-centered approach. She shares the strategies & activities she would use as a professional SLP so you can use them at home to become your child's best therapist.
Did you know..?
The easiest way to make speech practice feel so effortless and natural for your child that they don't even know they're "practicing"...
Is to use simple speech strategies during their daily routines.
Ready to learn how?
Our the Everyday Activities Mini-Course will walk you step-by-step through our favorite strategies to make speech practice easier than ever!
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