The Power of a Parent

Being a parent is like being a superhero- it requires resourcefulness, strength, and we often save the day, everyday! In our child’s eyes, we’re one of a kind, and the relationship and connection we share is irreplaceable. Therefore, it’s natural that we also play an important role in our child’s intervention.

When a child requires therapy, parents are often thrown into an unfamiliar and sometimes overwhelming world of therapists and services. The process of sourcing for therapists, understanding the assessment results and therapy plans can be intimidating and parents may be tempted to leave the “therapy” to the specialists. Parents may also doubt their ability to help. However, when you become active participants in the process, there can be so many benefits for everyone involved, especially for your child.

So, what are some of the superpowers that parents have?

The Power of Knowing your Child Best

Speech therapists are experts on clinical diagnoses and treatments, but you are experts on your child. You are the source of valuable information that will help us understand your child better and tailor our methods and goals accordingly. For example, it is helpful when you share about your little one’s personality and interests, or even fears. You can also monitor your child throughout the process, and provide valuable insights into his/her communication and feeding skills as therapy progresses, and across different everyday scenarios. 

The Power to Interact with your Child in Meaningful, Everyday Situations 

Children learn to communicate during everyday activities and conversations with the important people in their lives -  mainly, their parents! Thus, when you communicate with your children in an intentional way that promotes language and speech, you have the power to create motivating, meaningful and abundant opportunities for learning. 

Let’s do the math - let’s say therapists interact for one hour with your child weekly, and you spend one hour, everyday with your child interacting - that’s 7x more hours of interaction and practice! And imagine if this practice is extended into every part of the child’s day and is ongoing… It all adds up exponentially. 

In my personal experience, practice is most effective when interwoven into familiar routines and not a separate activity / task in the day. This also applies to other goals, such as articulation, social skills and feeding goals. The other key is to make it light-hearted and fun. Here are some great ideas on how to stimulate language naturally during your child’s everyday routines. 

The Power to Really make a Difference!

The research supports what we therapists observe, that parents have great power to make a difference. 

For example, research looking into children with a variety of language difficulties, such as language impairments, autism spectrum disorder and developmental delay found that they made good progress when their parents were trained to help them. They improved in language expression, comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar, and increased how often they communicated. Parents were found to be as effective at helping their child as speech-language therapists were. In fact, when it came to understanding language and grammar, they were more effective than the speech and language therapists. 

At Wonder Words, we believe in empowering parents on this journey. While parental involvement is not designed to  replace ongoing speech therapy, it is a powerful way to support our children, and the process.