Many parents find it hard to fit home practice from speech therapy into the daily schedule. When the kids get home from school and mom and dad get home from work, there may be only a few hours to do schoolwork, eat dinner, relax together as a family, and fit in bath time before bed.
Nevertheless, regular practice on speech goals is one of the most important aspects of the therapy process. Think of it this way: if your child goes to bed at 8:30 pm and wakes up at 6:30 am (10 hours), they are awake for 14 hours each day. That’s 98 hours per week, or 5880 minutes. One 45 minute session of speech therapy is not even 1% of your child’s waking hours each week! A weekly therapy session is a good start, but it’s probably not enough to see progress all by itself.
However, if you fit in even 10 minutes of speech homework on the other six days of the week (1 hour total), the time spent on speech each week would more than double! Yes, 1 hour and 45 minutes of speech each week would still less than 2% of your child’s waking hours, but what a difference just a little bit of practice can make when it happens regularly!
Speech practice time is time to put the full focus on speech. No noise, no phones, no TV – just one-on-one time to help new speech skills from therapy become automatic. Help your child see how each activity gets easier the more you practice together!
Sometimes parents think that using corrections and reminders all throughout the day would be just as helpful as spending 10 minutes dedicated just to speech practice. There are a couple of important reasons why this isn’t the best approach:
• First, it can be very frustrating for your child. Imagine working on a new speech sound at the single word level in therapy, but then being asked to produce the sound correctly during full sentences at home. When expectations for speech at home are too difficult to meet, it can make your child reluctant to take part in therapy sessions.
• Second, speech practice requires your child’s focus and attention – that’s just not happening in the middle of other activities!
So, make it easy on yourself! Pull out your speech homework book for a few minutes each day, and practice just the way your child’s therapist showed you during the last few speech sessions. You’ll get more out of your investment in speech therapy, and you’ll show your child how important speech homework is by making it a special part of your daily routine.
