Tuesday, April 24, 2012
In the last post I discussed resources and
services available to families with children who have communication disorders.
Family members play a very important role in the therapy and development of
children with communication disorders. Parents and family members can extend
speech therapy at home by encouraging and helping the child practice his/her language,
sounds, and oral-motor movements for a few minutes each day. For example, family
members can model sounds and mouth movements for the child, engage the child in
conversations that use the target sounds, read books with the target sounds,
play games that encourage the use of the sounds or words, engage children in
social scenarios and authentic language experiences to enhance their social
skills, etc. Doing tongue twisters, blowing bubbles, and other exercises can
help children develop and strengthen muscles necessary for speech and
swallowing. Even a simple reminders such as "use your good sounds", "lips together", "tongue up" can be very helpful. The more children with communication disorders talk and experience
speech, the more they benefit. Being supportive, talking to and with your
child, and practicing the sounds and oral-motor movements frequently at home is
the best thing that family members can do. Often times SLP's encourage families
to participate in the therapy sessions and suggest specific activities to do at
home as well. For an article
on additional ways to help children overcome speech disorders visit: http://voices.yahoo.com/how-help-child-overcome-speech-disorder-3519661.html
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Hi Megan,
ReplyDeleteI realize that it is so important for family members to be supportive of their child/sibling with a communication disorder and all types of learning disabilities as well. You included several ways that parents can help their child with a communication disorder and it seems as though there are many fun activities, such as tongue twisters, that can be used at home or at school. Based on the amount of information you have included, I would assume that most parents would be very appreciative of the ideas that you have mentioned in your blogs. During my internship, it was common for the parents to not really be involved with their child's learning process. I am not sure if this is the same experience you had during internship, but if you had a child in your class with a communication disorder who had uninvolved parents, what would be a good way to support this child in the classroom without any parental support? I would personally try to send home these students with activities they can do on their own, but then again I could run into the problem of angry parents thinking I am overstepping my boundaries, especially if the parents were opposed to their child having a communication disorder. Therefore, I would like to know if you have had any experiences with this or if you know how to best handle a situation like that?
-Megan
Hi Megan,
ReplyDeleteHopefully your students' families will be supportive, but if not teachers can help their students with communication disorders in the classroom by doing several things. Simple ways to support children with communication disorders include: reminding them to use their good sounds, modeling target sounds and mouth/articulator position, allowing children to engage in and practice social scenarios (how to properly start/end a conversation), etc. For example, if a child is having trouble with l sounds (/l/), the teacher could model how to correctly say this sound in the context of words, have that child practice saying l words or reading l words in the context of a story, and/or reminding the child to put his/her tongue up when saying this sound. Teachers can also look to school-based SLP's for advice and ways to support their children with speech/language disorders.