Ming explains how to practice speech therapy at home: pick a 5-10 minute slot each day, same time and place, and stick with it for 30-90 days before expecting results. Keep goals small, sessions short, and reward effort. Progress stalls sometimes, but consistency beats intensity.
Hey, welcome back to the second video of this video series titled how to Start Speech Therapy at Home. In this video, I want to talk about mindset, which is kind of strange. You would expect a lot of practical tips and tricks, which we would cover in later videos. But in this video, I want to talk about the mindset. And that's because if you don't have the correct mindset, you will give up. And the reason why is because you as a parent, it's not something that you've been doing every day. It's not your job. I'm sure you're very, very good at what you do and. But when it comes to learning new techniques, making new behaviors and habits, it becomes hard. So you need to create a routine of sitting down with your child for five to 10 minutes in the beginning so that there's a solid time that your child gets to sit down and interact with you. No matter if it's for practice, for playing whatever, it needs to have that routine of sitting down for five to 10 minutes to listen and learn from you. First of all, if you watched the previous video, you better watch it first because it tells you what tools you need. I would want you to find, like, a corner within your apartment or house that you can use for therapy. All right? It's a designated place where whenever you go there with the child, they know what's going to happen next. They get the good stuff. They get to play with you, they get to talk to you. This can be anywhere inside the house. I like a corner because it's tucked away. You can easily pull them towards there. If they run away, there's only one side they can run, right? And it's easy to manage that way. And once you have a designated place, you want a designated time. I want you to schedule this time into your schedule every day. And it's very easy to forget. It's like a little habit that you do. Let's say you're working out right? You. You want to build a better body. You would want to fit the gym time and workout time into your schedule. I want you to do this as well. From what is reported from my clients, it seems like before bedtime is a really good time to do so. It's when it's most quiet. Your husband or wife can help you look after the other kids. I know within a household of two to three children, it becomes very hectic. Within homeschooling and quarantine and everything like that. Some children are already accustomed to, like a bedtime story, you can replace it first with a therapy time just before bed. So creating a habit takes time. All right? Good habits take time. Bad habits are created pretty fast, pretty easily. That's because the way good habit works, results don't come immediately. Just like if you work out, if you eat clean, you're not going to be slim the next day. Right? Whereas if you're into alcohol, cigarettes, all those bad behaviors that we say, the moment that you do it, you get an effect immediately afterwards. And therapy is definitely something you don't see results immediately. So you have to stay put and put in the work. How much time do you need to create a habit now? It takes around 30 to 90 days, depending on how consistent you are. Given that I'm telling you to do it every day, you should be able to create this habit within 30 days. And it's important for the parents to have that habit because it's easy for children to build habits because they're so young and they're easily molded by the environment. But it's the parent who needs the most time getting used to this. All right, so that's why I'm asking you to set a small goal for you and your child. Just five to ten minutes a day of concentrated, undisturbed time that you can hang out and like, have play some bubbles, eat some snacks, do some easy, easy tasks so that it's like some micro, micro commitments until we can move towards bigger goals for the communication. And remember, when you start something, as much as it is disturbing you, it's even more so for a child. You're disrupting their life pattern. And remember, when you're doing communication, speech and language tasks with your child, that's something really hard for them. If you need to do that, it means they're struggling already. You sit them down for five to ten minutes every day to do some speech tasks. It's nearly impossible for them in the beginning. So keep that in mind. Make it easy, make it short, make it sweet, and reward them accordingly. So give us some time. I know in the beginning it feels like nothing is working. And most of my clients see the best results within like one to three months when they start understanding. Okay, so this works. I just need to keep on going. Yes, there are going to be plateaus. There are going to be times where you know your child screams and shouts and just want it to end. But as a therapist, as a teacher, we have to step up and realize that this is going to work. So just put in the time every day, slowly but surely. And from our experience, even if you were to seek therapy, you're able to go out and get speech therapy services. The best results come from when you're able to use techniques and strategies at home, because 90% of the time your child is at home anyways. And at this time of recording during the quarantine, we have more than enough time in our hands. That's just how we manage it. So if you found this video helpful, Please go to www.agentsofspeech.com checklist. If you haven't download that PDF, I'll be sending more guidelines through email to you and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
