“A jug fills drop by drop”  -Buddha

About a year ago I decided that I wanted to learn Spanish.  We have a number of Spanish speaking families that come into our office for therapy services and I wanted to be able to communicate with them without the use of an interpreter.  So I bought a workbook, signed up for an online program and even enlisted one of our Spanish-speaking therapists to help me with conversational skills.  I was able to keep this up for about a month –my tutor even complemented me on how well I was beginning to pick up the language.  But soon my schedule got so busy that I didn’t continue all of my efforts and now a year later-I still do NOT know Spanish.

Consistency….

I had started with a huge intense effort-which is great-but what I lost was the consistency.  Without consistency, huge efforts that we tend to make change  (around new years, our birthday or a new school year) are just moments that we make and end of frustrated because of the big deal we  made a change we want to make.

Consistency…

It made me think about a time when I decided to pay off my student loans.  I created a budget and made a plan for paying off those loans.  Every month I updated my budget and made the hard decisions every day about my spending and before I knew it—my student loans were paid off.

Consistency…

You may want your child to talk more or increase the way they produce their speech sounds or their grades to improve.  The reality is that consistency (in 2 areas) is what is going to get you to the goal:

1. Consistency in therapy sessions/school attendance

In our clinic although we make recommendations for children and therapy services but our biggest recommendation is whatever works best for the family and their life.  For example even though I recommend that a child have speech therapy twice per week—I always encourage the family to take an honest look at their lives to see if it works.  I have ALWAYS seen more progress in a child that comes to therapy consistently once per week than a child that comes starts therapy twice per week and then inconsistently comes for the next six months.

2. Consistency in home practice

Even with consistent therapy session attendance—HOME PRACTICE IS ESSENTIAL.  It is as necessary as completing homework assignments are for academic progress.  Take 5-10 min 3-5 times per week to practice those speech sounds, practice communication on the AAC device or engage your toddler in language building skills.  This consistency is so valuable to increasing speech and language skills.

If your child is already seeing a Speech-Language Pathologist-consistency is the key for your child’s success.  Make attendance in therapy sessions and consistency in home practice a priority.  You will be so glad that you did!

*For any other questions, check out our website at www.speechbuilders.org or send us an email at inf0@speechbuilders.org.