Don’t Let the Coronavirus Disrupt Your Speech Therapy Progress

In this article, we provide several instructional videos that contain helpful speech therapy exercises and activities parents can perform with their child at home. This is a follow-up article to our recent post: Speech Therapy During the Coronavirus: A Helpful Guide

Speech therapy plays an essential role in early language development. Unfortunately, as schools and clinics continue to close across the country due to the coronavirus (COVID-19), many families have been left without access to vital speech therapy services.

Disruptions to recurring speech therapy can have a detrimental effect on your child’s progress, potentially delaying or reversing advancements they’ve been making. 

The good news: It doesn’t have to. 

One of the most powerful tools your child has to improve their speech and language development also happens to be their most accessible: you. 

We get it: being quarantined at home all day with your child can be....taxing. But it also presents a unique opportunity to take a more active role in their progress. 

Practicing speech therapy skills at home

Children learn to communicate during everyday activities and conversations--and no one spends more time with your child than you. There are many ways parents can integrate speech exercises, corrections, queues, and support into their child’s daily life. 

We recently launched our new YouTube series that provides short, at-home exercises on a variety of speech- and language-related topics: learning to talk, stuttering, lisp, speech sound disorders, and more. These videos provide practical tips parents can use with their child during everyday activities. Trying them out during play and daily routines will help caregivers see how small adjustments can have a big impact on their child’s development. 

Here are a few videos to help you get started.

1. How to use choices to help promote early language development with children

In this video, I discuss everyday techniques to help young children better understand language and learn to talk. Learn how to use verbal and visual choices to support your child’s comprehension and help them use new words to communicate.

2. Modeling words to help promote early language development

This video explains a common technique used by both speech therapists and parents called natural language modeling, or language expansion. This simple but extremely effective practice can be used with all children, with or without a language delay.  

3. Using attention to help promote early language development

This technique is called joint attention, and it can help children better pick up and adopt words from other people in their environment. This is most useful when a parent and child are both interested in the same object--say a snack or toy--and each recognizes the other’s interest, too.

4. How to teach your young child to follow directions

This video explains how you can use hand gestures and visual cues to help teach your young children to follow directions. This is not only important for effective parenting - but also for your child's social and language development.

5. Using household items to promote early language development

Who knew that every item in your house can be used as a teaching tool? This video explains how you can use the toys and items you have at home to help your children start using new words and expanding their vocabulary.

6. How to teach your young child to take turns

In this video I walk through how to use hand gestures and visual cues to help teach your young child to take turns. Turn-taking is a lifelong skill that’s critical to the development of their social skills and language.

Ongoing support for families impacted by COVID-19

At Expressable, we're committed to helping everyone reach their communication goals --especially during these difficult times. If you're looking for additional educational resources, or would like to learn more about connecting with a certified speech-language therapist online and from the comfort of your home, learn more here.