Ming from Agents of Speech explains how parents become effective speech therapists by understanding the why behind therapy and prioritizing play over drills. Build routines around what naturally engages your child, like spinning on a chair, and embed language targets into those moments instead of forcing structured tasks.
I realized that if parents don't have the understanding of how we do therapy, why do we do it? How to make sure that the child has a good relationship with the parent. The parents will say, it's not working. I don't want to do it. I don't understand. This whole task isn't going to help. And the only reason is because they're putting the expectations in the wrong place and they shouldn't be thinking about, oh, language comes first. No, it doesn't. Your relationship with a kid comes first. Having strong rewards, strong play routines, having something that, that you can engage a child is very important. You could be spinning them on a chair. Whatever that engages the kid will be a starting point for you to inject language tasks inside. But you don't do that unless you can engage the kid. What's the point of trying to pull the kid back to the chair every time? What's the point of prompting a child to talk when they're half leaving and half here, or they're rolling on the floor, on the carpet and touching other things? Right. What's the point of describing things around the house when they're just running around?
