You and your child have gone through the initial evaluation with a speech-language pathologist, whether its at a private office, in a school or at your home and now you are ready to begin the therapy sessions.  Many parents think that just taking the child to therapy regularly is all they have to do to make therapy a success (although regular attendance is important).  Sometimes speech therapy is treated like an extracurricular activity (dance, karate, soccer).  Actually-I see more parent participation at my nieces’ soccer games than I do in speech therapy… 

About 10-15 years ago, there was this informercial for the Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ oven.  This oven cooked all sorts of foods and their slogan was “you can set it and forget it.” Unfortunately some parents feel this way about speech therapy.  But because your child is dealing with a delay the carryover at  home is so important to the success.  I know that many of our parents use the time that their child is in the session to grab a phone call, make a shopping list or just get 30-45 minutes of silence but going into the session with your child is an great way to see what therapist is doing and how you can do the same activities at home.

Here are a list of things to keep in mind to maximize your child’s therapy experience:

–Attend sessions regularly-if you are going to miss a session make it up in the same week. Get ahead of your calendar and look out for those previously scheduled appointments that may interfere with your scheduled therapy sessions.

–Go into the therapy session at least once a month with  your child. This shows them that this is important to you. Now there are times, if the child is easily distracted or using the parent’s attention to get out of completing therapy activities, we ask the parent to wait in the waiting room. But if this is not the case this is a great way to see what your therapist is doing and how you can do it/practice the skills at home.

–Practice at home-this is THE most important thing.  Even if your child gets an hour and a half to tow hours of therapy per week (most get 30-60 minutes)-that is not nearly enough to make the kind of progress you would like.  Even practicing five minutes per day makes so much of a difference in your child’s speech/language/academic progress.

–If you are not getting practice materials from your therapist-ask them for at home practice sheets or suggestions. Just five minutes a day makes progress.

Remember speech therapy is not a set it an forget it kind of experience.  If you carry over the activities from the therapy room-it makes speech therapy more of a success.