Your child's first speech therapy session can be an intimidating experience for both you and your child. As a parent, it's natural to feel a range of emotions, from nervousness to excitement. But don't worry, a speech therapy session is a safe, supportive space where your child can receive the care and attention they need to develop their communication skills.

Here's what you can expect during your child's first speech therapy session:

1. Evaluation and Assessment

Your child's first speech therapy session will typically involve an evaluation and assessment. This process will help the speech therapist determine your child's strengths and weaknesses when it comes to their communication skills. The therapist will observe your child's ability to make sounds, form words, and communicate effectively. They may also conduct standardized tests to measure your child's language and speech development.

2. Communication Goals

Once the evaluation and assessment are complete, the speech therapist will work with you to create communication goals for your child. These goals will be tailored to your child's individual needs and will be designed to help them improve their communication skills. The therapist may also give you tips and strategies for practicing speech therapy techniques at home.

3. Therapy Techniques

During the session, the speech therapist will introduce your child to a range of therapy techniques that can help them improve their communication skills. These techniques may include exercises to improve pronunciation, articulation, and vocalization. They may also involve activities to improve language comprehension, socialization skills, and cognitive development.

4. Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is an essential part of speech therapy. During the session, the speech therapist will provide your child with positive feedback and praise to encourage them to continue practicing their communication skills. This positive reinforcement can help boost your child's confidence and motivation to continue working on their speech development.

5. Homework

At the end of the session, the speech therapist will likely give you and your child homework to practice between sessions. This homework will help reinforce the techniques and skills learned during the session and will help your child make progress towards their communication goals.

In conclusion, your child's first speech therapy session is an important step towards improving their communication skills. The session will involve an evaluation and assessment, communication goal setting, therapy techniques, positive reinforcement, and homework. By working with a speech therapist, your child can develop the skills they need to communicate effectively and confidently.

Every baby may not speak at the same pace; every child is different. But there are speech therapy activities for toddlers that you can do to help your child learn to talk.

Use simple sounds

Use simple sounds like “da” and “ma” or “ba” and “aa” or “ooh” to babies even when they are newborns. These vowels and consonants have a great response from children. These simple speech therapy activities help your child to talk. As they grow, they listen and try to imitate you.

Speak slowly so the baby can understand

Try to use simple words and friendly tones. Your toddler can understand what you are saying if you talk to her face to face. Make eye contact and speak slowly and patiently. If the child repeats the words incorrectly just gently repeat the words in the correct manner, so she understands the difference.

TV does NOT help to get children to talk

Don’t turn on the TV as soon as you get home or have it on constantly when your toddler is in the room. Contrary to what you may think the TV is not considered part of speech therapy activities. Contact with people is crucial in the language development process.

Play with your child

Playing is a good way to communicate with your child and also build motor skills and many other benefits. Allow your toddler to tell you what to do. Stay in the background and do only what you are asked to do. Playing with your child builds confidence without pressurizing your child to talk. Playing is a fun part of your speech therapy activities!

Tell your baby what you are doing

When you are feeding, bathing, or changing your child, keep talking about what you are doing. If you are going out, talk about where you are going with him/her in simple language. You will be amazed at the number of things that tiny brains can store and bring out at the most appropriate times!

Read books

Reading a book with lots of colorful pictures and words is one of the best speech therapy activities there is. Your child will love to look at a book curled up on your lap. Reading gets associated with security and love. This activity can lead your child to a life-long love of books.

Introduce colors and shapes

Show your child colors on colorful building blocks and other items and gently point out the colors and shapes and say the name of the shape and color as you play with her. Your child learns to distinguish both colors and shapes naturally and at the same time.

Hand gestures

Use lots of hand movements like clapping, peek-a-boo, itsy bitsy spider (fingers crawling up his arm), waving when you leave, and other gestures along with the appropriate words. All these hand gestures help the child to associate a word with a meaning and build their vocabulary.

Singing and rhyming

Sing children’s songs and nursery rhymes with your child. It is a vital part of your speech therapy activities. They encourage speech because of the presence of rhythm and rhyming words. It brings your child closer to you; you are both having fun and learning too!

Introduce new words

Add to words your child already says like “doll,” if he/she says doll you say “big doll,” or “pink doll.” Your baby learns other new words and is learning to associate words with each other. Point to you and say “mommy/daddy” and point to him and say his/her name.

Teach them to ask for things

When giving your child something to eat, name it, say “how about an apple? We have red apples. Does baby want an apple or a banana?” Whether it is a shirt or dress in the morning or the choice between eggs or pancakes; children learn to ask for things and make decisions. This activity also can also help in your baby’s neurodevelopment.

Encourage communication

When your child says something, encourage him by making eye contact. Correct him or only by repeating what he/she is saying with the correct words, so the child learns the correct way to say words.

Teach “thank you” and “please” early

Children learn from their parents to be polite. Use the words please and thank you when you speak to him/her and while speaking to other family members. Your child will automatically pick up these words too. Get family members to help by cooperating. This activity will also help to groom your child to be a well-mannered adult in the future.

Best Toys To Help Your Child’s Speech Development

Nothing works better than using a toy to help with your child’s speech development. If you ask any Speech-Language Pathologist, they would recommend that the best method is to play with your child and when come to play, toys going to be a helpful tool to help train your baby’s speech and language skills.

While there are ample toys but not all toys are suitable. You might think that those shiny and colorful Fisher-Price pianos that play out ABC music when your toddler pressed the keyboard are perfect but they are not. Electrical toys tend to limit children's imagination as the child does not need to do anything while the toys were entertaining them.

The best type of toys to stimulate children’s speech and language development are those that let your child move around and play with them manually. So, on the next trip to Toys-R-Us, look for these main points when you buy toys for speech therapy activities for toddlers:

• High-quality toys that can take a beating.
• Toys that your child likes – cars, animals, dolls, painting and etc.
• Toys that build imagination (i.e, stacking wooden block toys)
• Try not to get battery-operated toys.
• Toys that encourage movement activity (i.e, a ball)

Ideal Toys For Toddlers

These are the best type of toys recommended by a Speech-Language Pathologist while you are doing speech therapy activities for toddlers:

Wooden Blocks

Toddlers love to stack blocks. If you get colorful ones with letters on them you can gradually talk about the red block or the one with the letter A. You can teach words like “tall” “up” and “on.” My friend’s daughter is just one, and she can already find the “red” block! The Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden ABC/123 Blocks Set is the perfect toy for this.

Resources: https://lauracrambspeechtherapyinc.co.za

Call Southern Pediatric Therapy Clinic today — (769) 242-2139 — for expert assessment and a customized treatment plan.

Speech therapy is thought of as the avenue to help teach children how to say their speech sounds correctly. However, speech therapy goes way beyond just teaching speech!! And, way beyond just teaching children!

Speech therapy consists of techniques and activities aimed at improving overall communication by addressing delays and disorders in expressive/receptive language, articulation, oral motor dysfunction, apraxia of speech, social language, fluency (stuttering), feeding and swallowing, and cognitive skills. 

Our trained speech therapists, work closely with your toddler or child to assess their ability to speak and understand others properly before creating customized therapy sessions based on the kid’s specific speech and language goals.

^{Why Would My Child Need Speech Therapy?}

Speech therapy can help with so many more skills pertaining to communication, both oral and written. This specialized therapy can assist with relationship building, and brain development, and can improve the overall quality of life.

Additionally, speech therapy may be necessary for a child who has experienced speech impairment due to an illness or injury. There are a variety of reasons why a child may need speech therapy. If you notice that your child is not on par with their peers or developmental milestones for their age, ongoing or intensive speech therapy sessions may be beneficial to the child.

Here are some of the lesser-known areas that speech therapy can help to address for your child.

Improved Communication

Speech and language therapy is not just about speech; it also includes language. Many people have a misconception that speech therapy is just about speech but it is so much more than that.

Speech therapy can help a child, beginning at the most basic level, to simply communicate their needs and wants. This communication may be nonverbal such as through gestures or facial expressions, sign language, or using a picture exchange system; or taught to use simple sounds or approximations to request what they want or need if they aren’t yet able to say full words.

Speech therapy continues to help improve communication abilities over time. At a higher level of communication, individuals who have difficulty having conversations can be taught how to interpret and respond to questions and statements and how to keep this conversation going.

 We depend on communication as we navigate the world and interact with others. By giving a child along any stage of development the ability to communicate, speech therapy can open up so many opportunities and help the child become more independent as he or she grows!

Social Skills

Speech therapy can support children with their social skill development. First, it can help teach skills such as matching emotions to faces or how to carry on a conversation; it also addresses more abstract skills like identifying and understanding others’ nonverbal body language as well as learning the expected ways to communicate in a variety of settings or with different communication partners (i.e. think talking to one’s peers vs. talking to a teacher). 

This support can help a child to build stronger connections with other people and more fulfilling, lasting relationships. Why? Individuals who have a hard time with social skills (whether it be the effect of their social behaviors on others or difficulty reading people and their behaviors) often struggle to build these social connections and relationships that typical children are able to build effortlessly. 

This can lead to loneliness and even depression. With speech therapy focused on social skills, children can learn this area of pragmatic communication that doesn’t always develop easily for everyone, make and keep friendships, and really blossom into happier, more connected kids!

Social skills can be used with video modeling, role-playing, specific therapy apps, social stories, and other various strategies and tools. The use of aided communication with these strategies to work on improving these social skills is an important aspect of speech therapy.

Helps with Reading

Speech delay can cause problems listening, reading, and writing. Reading and literacy skills can significantly aid in communication. When you can spell, you can communicate freely. Teaching these essential skills can be the key to better communication with others.

Speech therapy is a treatment that can help improve communication skills. Many people think that speech therapy is only for kids with speech disorders that affect pronunciation. But it also helps kids who struggle with spoken and written language. That includes those with language disorders and reading challenges. A speech therapist will start by identifying what kind of speech or language problem a child has. Then they determine what’s causing it and decide on the best treatment.

Enhances Alternative Communication Methods

Work on other communication strategies to aid communication such as gestures, sign language, approximations, vocalizations, and/or other means of communication. As humans, we communicate with a total communication approach. We communicate via speech, facial expressions, gestures, eye contact, writing, typing, and many other forms of communication.

Teaching on how to communicate in other ways in addition to a formal means of aided communication (e.g. use the sign for “bathroom”, “eat” and “drink”, tap on a person’s shoulder to get their attention, etc). For example, if a child can say “ha,” use that for “help”. For the approximation, “ba” you might use that for “book” if that is important to that specific individual.

Looking for more tips and questions? Contact us!

At Southern Pediatric Therapy Clinic, we provide speech therapy sessions customized to your child’s needs. We love speech therapy! call us today and schedule an appointment!