Making the Most of Your School-Based Speech Services

Parents' Corner School Speech and Hearing Disorders Speech Therapy Techniques

Congratulations! You’ve made it off a waiting list for school-based speech therapy services for your child. Through no fault of their own, many school districts provide speech therapy in groups of three to five children – in some states, the legal maximum can be six.

You’re grateful for the chance to have the support for your child’s speech challenges, but may feel that it could be challenging to address your child’s specific speech challenge efficiently in a group of other children who also have their own very specific challenges and goals.

As a speech pathologist who has worked in both schools and in private practice, I emphasize supplementing your school-based services with home-based work to help your child reach their speech goals.

School-based speech pathologists are dedicated and passionate professionals. They’re not only educators but also pillars of the communities they serve.

However, they’re often faced with huge caseloads that prevent them from going that “extra mile” for your child. That’s why it is critical for parents to be empowered to support their own child’s speech journey directly.

Speech Buddies provide a solution to do that in two key ways:

1) They provide a specially designed and clinically proven way to cue your child to place and move his/her tongue exactly as it should for those hard-to-learn speech sounds that develop in late pre-kindergarten and early school years (e.g. R, L, SH, CH and S)

2) They come with actionable support and learning plans that empower you to be the most effective partner in your child’s therapy process.

Each speech sound requires your child to place the tongue specifically within the mouth. For example, with the commonly disarticulated S sound, if they place the tongue too far back or too far forward in their mouth, the S won’t come out right.

Using a hand-held delivery mechanism, the S Speech Buddy provides a clear and consistent target within the mouth for your child to hit each time. In many cases, Speech Buddies provide that “aha!” moment early in the therapy process, where your child just gets it.

This can be enormously motivating for your child and for you, and is the first crucial step toward remediating a speech challenge.

But, because your child has said that speech sound in the old, incorrect way literally hundreds of thousands of times in his or her young life, it’s essential you follow up with diligent practice so this new, correct way of speaking can quickly become habit.

We know that school-based group therapy essentially means that your child gets 5 to 10 minutes of directed attention for his or her specific speech goals.  Speech Buddies tools come with a comprehensive lesson plan to help support your child.

Speech pathologists welcome parent involvement, but school-based therapists can’t give 50-70 parents a home lesson plan each week. Our lesson plans provide a clear roadmap for success and help make your child’s speech pathologist’s job easier.

If your child is in a group of three at school and is in two 30-minute speech sessions per week, your child is really getting 20-minutes of directed speech therapy per week. So, even twenty solid minutes of home-based work with your child effectively doubles the practice your child is getting; forty minutes triples this time!

And many studies throughout the field of speech pathology have confirmed that parents can only help their children meet their goals faster.

 

 

 

How To Manage Your Child’s Speech Challenges While On A School Waiting List

Expert Corner Parents' Corner Special Needs Speech delay Speech Therapy for Kids

The Covid pandemic brought an unprecedented staffing challenge across the entire American healthcare system. From hospitals, to outpatient private practices to schools, there aren’t enough speech pathologists to serve the demand for services that further exploded because of lockdowns.

We are seeing research studies come out now that confirm how lockdowns and remote learning set children back in their speech development.

While this might explain why your child hasn’t been receiving the school-based or clinic-based services, it does nothing to allay your concerns as a parent.

But with the help of Speech Buddies®, you can take your child’s speech development into your own hands.

Let me explain.

Speech Buddies are a set of patented, clinically proven hand-held devices that help a child feel correct tongue placement for those most difficult speech sounds that typically develop in late pre-school and early school years.

Since 2007? thousands of speech pathologists and tens of thousands of parents and children have successfully used them. See our testimonials here. Speech Buddies takes the guesswork out of eliciting speech sounds and speed up a child’s acquisitions of these often difficult-to-learn speech sounds.

The elegance of Speech Buddies as a speech therapy solution lies both in its efficacy and flexibility.

We always recommend having your child evaluated and treated by a licensed speech pathologist for a diagnosed speech challenge, especially if you believe your child’s speech challenge may be more than just of mild severity.

But, Speech Buddies may provide a critical bridge to expedited care amid this staffing situation. You may have an “ah ha moment” within the first few minutes of using the device and our extensive library of training videos and lesson plans will give you a head start on your child’s treatment regimen.

Because we specifically designed Speech Buddies tools for each speech sound (please see descriptions of each device: R, S, SH, L, CH), you only need to purchase the device(s) that apply to your child’s situation. So, when you’re finally moved off the waiting list for services, you could be farther along in the therapy process.

Depending on the speech therapy staffing predicament in your local area, Speech Buddies may also offer a fantastic option for those who would opt for out-of-network services, resources permitting, while potentially reducing the overall cost of those services.

Out-of-network providers almost never have extensive waiting lists given very limited or unavailable funding coverage.

You should be able to get in for an evaluation and services without being placed on a waiting list. If Speech Buddies work for your child’s speech treatment regimen, our tools are proven to reduce the time in therapy for certain speech sound disorders. By accessing a key sensory modality in learning, the sense of touch, Speech Buddies can help achieve a quicker learning breakthrough.

Speech Buddies hand-held tool empowers both the parent and child to recreate the speech therapy session in your own home while building confidence and enabling critical parent involvement in therapy. We also offer a free directory, Speech Buddies Connect, of SLP’s on our website.

Parents are powerless over staffing challenges across healthcare services but, you have access the clinically proven options.

Your child’s speech development is important and can be complex. If you ever have questions about Speech Buddies as a specific solution for your child’s situation, please contact us today!

We’re happy to hear your child’s situation and point you toward actionable solutions.

Baby talk: does it help or hurt how your baby learns language?

Baby talk: does it help or hurt how your baby learns language?

Language Building Skills Language Development Parents' Corner

Often referred to as ‘baby talk’, Motherese (or Parentese or Fatherese) is a term used to describe the quality of speech caregivers often use when speaking to a newborn child. Using a higher pitch, more exaggerated articulation, and great facial expressions, we seem to naturally talk in this manner to babies.

Many have debated the importance or hindrance that use of baby talk has on a child’s speech and language development. Some parents believe that baby talk is an important first step in teaching a child to talk and some believe that using baby talk limits a child’s language comprehension. Researchers have conducted studies to find an answer. While modeling adult language is beneficial to a child’s speech and language development, baby talk has withstood the test of time and been a useful tool in creating a bond between an infant and their parent. This attachment helps a child learn to develop relationships with others throughout life. Babies from many different cultures around the world, speaking many different languages have shown interest in this quality of speech as it grabs their attention. This type of interaction can also give an infant their first experience with social cues such as turn taking and eye contact, and speech sounds.

Within the first days of life, a baby’s brain has remarkable neuroplasticity, meaning they can create new neural connections quickly and absorb new information like a sponge. As they experience their first sights, smells, and sounds, they make many first impressions that are everlasting. Studies have shown that babies often learn to recognize and prefer the sound of their caretaker’s voice. Although researchers have not been able to identify whether it’s more beneficial to use adult speech right from the start, use of brain scanning technology has allowed us to see the reactions infants have to adults using baby talk in their native language as well as foreign languages. This TED talk by Patricia Kuhl discusses one of these studies.

Remember- there is no clearly defined right or wrong style of parenting or teaching. If you are a new parent, no matter how you choose to speak to your child, just make sure you do it! Even when you are not speaking directly to an infant, they’re constantly taking in information and making connections. Whether by choice or instinct, if you do use motherese with your child, it is recommended that this type of speech be weaned off as the child reaches toddlerhood and begins develop speech and language skills.

More resources to check out:

ASHA: How Babies Form Foundations for Language 

TED: The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies

Photo credit: www.prettymomguide.com

How to pay for Speech Therapy? 3 Families, 3 Approaches

How to pay for Speech Therapy? 3 Families, 3 Approaches

Financial Resources

Particularly since the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the public options available to parents to cover the costs of speech therapy have been gradually tightening. I have seen many children in my practice who previously would easily qualify for services, but now are turned away, making the question of “how to pay for speech therapy” even more challenging.

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