How to Help a Child with Speech Delay?
Speech delay is one of the most overlooked issues in children by parents. While delayed speech and language difficulty are associated with speech disabilities, most of the children, as times passes, will outgrow of the same. However, there are other children who do not and such children need effective intervention from the best speech pathologist to correct the course of their language development.
Here are some speech therapy tips for parents to use at home to help improve your child with speech delay.
Indulge in Self-Talk
One of the best ways to help children talk better is to make them listen to conversations. And in doing so, self-talk is the best way. You can talk about everything you are doing to your child so that the child gets exposed to talking as much as possible. An important aspect to keep in mind is that you need to keep your language simple and sentences shorter.
Use Sign-Language
This is another strategy to help the child get exposed to language. You can incorporate sign language into your conversation so that the children are able to understand what is being talked more easily. Several studies conducted in speech pathology field support the fact that sign language can directly influence the speech patterns of children, especially those with delayed speech.
Make use of Parallel talk
Another technique advised by most speech pathologists is parallel talk, which is essentially the same as self-talk. However, here, instead of talking about what you are doing, you will be talking about what the child is doing. You can label the objects the child is playing with, what the child is doing, what the child is hearing and what the child is feeling, to name a few of the things you can talk about.
Build Receptive Vocabulary
As explained by professional speech pathologists , one of the most important aspects that a parent must understand is that the child must be able to understand the words in the first place to effectively use them. Unless the child understands the words, there is no way he/she would use them. Hence, helping the child develop receptive vocabulary is really important.
While these are some of the techniques that parents can use at home to help children with speech delay address the issue, getting the advice from a more seasoned speech pathologist can help the child develop better speech skills.
