Ming (Agents of Speech) explains how to support language development at home for children with speech delays. He emphasizes keeping therapy focused by limiting concurrent goals to about three, educating parents (pointing to free online resources and courses), and encouraging parents to learn from and support each other through community for motivation and practical strategies.
How can you help with language development at home? A lot of times therapy is about subtracting, not adding. That's why in therapy we only have three goals that we're concurrently doing. I'm not talking about ABA therapy. For other types of therapy, we only have like, at most three goals that we're doing. Firstly, it's the time. Secondly is that how much can the child actually know and learn in a specific time frame? So we want to give parents that basic knowledge. It's all free on the Internet. Just go, go to agents of Speech.com course. We have a community that goes with that. Online courses. You can learn from other parents too, which is my second point. The parents learn from other parents. Sometimes those parents who are like, no child is the same, but things certainly rhyme. Okay? That's why there are diagnosis, right? Because we're putting in them in buckets so that professionals like myself or any speech therapist out there can see, oh, this is a case that has these characteristics. And therefore, when I'm looking at that child, I'm thinking about these certain therapy goals, right? So then when parents see other parents who are doing something similar, then they can start generalizing and think about these things. So when parents learn from other parents, it's knowledge sharing. They see it in action, right? And number three, the most important part is that you feel like someone gets you and they're going through the same thing, and it pushes you and motivates you to keep on going.
