Invaluable Speech Therapy Book and Help

January 27, 2009 by Nicole · 2 Comments
Filed under: Toddlers

I recently overheard some moms at my son’s preschool talking about Speech Therapy, and I realize I’ve never blogged about Speech Therapy and some wonderful things that I can pass on about it here in the blogosphere. My son speaks very well now, and we were done with Speech Therapy long before I started blogging…

BUT, someone is always dealing with a child’s ‘speech delay’ as they call it. So I’m sharing what I learned.

My son was not speaking more than a few words when he turned 2. We started to be concerned, so looked into Speech Therapy. First of all, if you are in Montgomery County, MD, you are lucky to have a fantastic speech therapy team and services that will test your child, provide a speech therapist to come to your home, as well as speech therapy classes for parents- ALL FREE.

The last bit of information is the most important: classes for parents; and the most important part of the speech therapy class that I took was the book- It Takes Two To Talk. This book is invaluable. It teaches simple ways to motivate you child to speak and great ways to encourage speech. One suggestion was so simple that I overlooked it: Squat down and talk to your child face-to-face. I remember thinking, “What help is that? I already do that.” But then I started to be conscious of taking the 3 extra seconds that it takes to squat down, look at my son, and then speak. I started to see a difference right away…

This book and class are done by The Hanen Centre, a charitable organization dedicated to the development of speech.

This stuff works! My son went from barely speaking to talking articulately in complete sentences within a year.

This really is a success story and I want to pass on that it is vital for your child’s speech development to take steps yourself in how you interact with your child, helpful things you can do to illicit speech. Just another mistake that I made example that this book pointed out to me: I’d answer my own questions for him,

“Do you want juice?” And I’d just let him nod and reach for the sippy cup that I was already bringing to him, instead of asking, “What would you like to drink with lunch?”

Speech delays are worrisome, but taking action sooner rather than later, will help you and your child. The good news is that speech delays are most times, easy to fix, with repetition and continued effort.