Ming (Agents of Speech) explains why children—especially those with speech delays—may not focus on home learning tasks that they can do in therapy. The primary reason given is that the child often does not understand the task in the changed home environment and/or when the instructor (parent vs. therapist) changes, so the skill fails to transfer.
Let's talk about why your child isn't focusing Most of the time when parents try to teach some home practice they have from a speech therapy or another therapy, they give you a four sheet of paper with home exercises, you try to do it, kid doesn't care, right? Sits there, starts like looking around, thinking about other things, playing with the paper, doing exactly everything except for the command that you asked the kid to do. So why is it? The most probable reason and the most the most obvious one is that the child doesn't understand the task. So you would be very surprised that a child is able to do a similar task at a therapy center versus at home. And the reason is because the environment has changed and it has made it harder for the child to understand that this skill is supposed to be transferred over at home and especially the instructor has changed. It has become as if the child doesn't know that they're supposed to do the same thing with mom or dad. They don't understand the task.
