Parent Information - Tips and Hints

Introduction

This is a list of ideas we have tried with our daughter to encourage the development of her speech.

Many of these ideas have been given to us by speech therapists, special needs teachers, class teachers, other parents, friends and family or are from my own experiences as a teacher.

They may not be suitable for all children with speech problems, but you may find some are worth trying. If you are unsure about their suitability for your child check with your speech therapist.

A lot of these ideas seem very obvious, so apologies if you are already using them. I think it is worth putting them here as I have found that the simplest techniques have also been the most helpful. Often these ideas were not something I had thought of myself.

Tips and Hints

• If you think your child may have a speech problem get a referral to see a speech therapist. Ask your doctor or health visitor to help you to do this.
  
  
• Take time to really listen to what your child is saying to you.
  
  
• Repeat back what they said, filling in any missing words, or mispronunciations. (With Beth we did not point out mistakes i.e. we did not say 'Don't say ish say fish', we just repeated the sentence replacing ish with fish.)
  
  
• Give your child time to answer questions.
  
  
• Try and follow your child's lead, if you start an activity and it goes a different way to the one you were expecting, but it still has good value for speech practice then go with it.
  
  
• Seize the moment, be prepared to act when your child suggests an activity. Don't delay if they want to do it act while their motivation is high. This is obviously impractical sometimes but at others with a bit of flexibility we found this worked really well. Far better than trying to set a time for an activity and hoping Beth would be in the right mood at that time.
  
  
• Make it fun, vary what you do and try to avoid activities becoming boring.
  
  
• Try to give your child some control over what they are doing e.g. looking at flashcards where you want your child to describe the picture, place the cards face down one after another in a pile and ask your child to shout or signal when to STOP, then turn over that card and say word or discuss the picture.
  
  
• A little and often, we have found this the best approach with all Beth's speech therapy activities.