5 Strategies to Help Families Act as Speech and Language Coaches

As school ends for summer and families plan summer vacations, speech-language pathologists plan activities for caregivers and families to work on with their child, sibling, niece, or cousin. Coaching families can boost a child’s progress over summer break or help them maintain key communication skills. Coaching by caregivers and siblings can happen anywhere, with any age child, no matter the type of communication disorder. Teaching family members—whether it’s parents, step-parents, grandparents, siblings, or cousins—your strategies or “tricks” empowers them and can result in better long-term outcomes for your clients. From Couching to Coaching: How do we get families engaged in early intervention? It starts with us communicating their enormous influence on their children’s development. Parents and SLPs—Partners in Success So, how do we work with families to help their child with communication impairments succeed beyond the treatment room? Try an episodic care model. This model offers a definitive start and stop date of focused and skilled intervention. Continuous ongoing treatment can cause children and families to burn out, especially if a child sees an SLP at school and privately and when other kids are off for summer break. With multiple bursts of family-centered and goal-focused intervention with session breaks, focus and progress can improve. Make the family’s goals a priority. I consult with the family on their priorities for treatment right afte...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Private Practice Schools Slider Speech-Language Pathology Uncategorized Early Intervention Language Disorders Source Type: blogs