Speech Therapy

Don’t ever think about going to speech therapy can be boring! Every time, I bring my younger son, Ryan to speech therapy lesson twice a week at Children’s Hospital, I find it interesting. He does enjoy going to speech therapy. He cooperates both in structure and play approaches very well.

Attending Speech Therapy has changed over decades. When I was young, I attended speech therapy twice a week, just like Ryan, and having speech lesson at home daily. It was ONLY structure approach. Boy, I felt SO BAD for my mom and the speech therapist that suffered with my temper tantrum by wiping the stuff off the table. (Mom, please forgive my bad manners.) Just image that I had to practice with my tongue in a front of a mirror, blowing with the feathers, using my fingers over my noses and neck. Using this structure method, I have attended speech therapy for the first thirteen years of my life. This old fashioned approach has paid it off. Look at my life right now ! I am able to communicate with others without relying on hearing adults or a sign language interpreter.

Currently, I am being paid back for doing the same thing for my younger son, Ryan because I wanted to see him able at least to communicate with others. However, his speech lesson is a lot better than in my time. In his first year, it was extremely difficult for Ryan to stay on task because his speech therapist was going through trial and errors by finding it out what is the best approach. In a very short time, she quickly discovered that he learns best through by both structure and play approaches in order to stay on task.

With his structure approach, he currently is working on his pronouns (He/She) by looking at the picture, preposition phrases (Behind/In a Front/Next) by doing hand-on activities and Verb Actions by saying it in a sentence such as “He is driving a car.” He is improving gradually by getting between 50 to 80 % accuracy during his Structure Approach. Of course, he likes getting “high five” praises. That is what I did at home. He often says, “High Five, Good Job, Great Job” to his peers at his school.

After he has accomplished at least 5 to 10 trials, then he can play for a minute. During one minute play, he can talk about the activities he is using (Farm Animals, Birthday Party, Trains, and few other activities.) When one-minute timer ticks, he goes straight back to his structure approaches. He repeats the same thing until the speech lesson has ended. His rewarding for doing the good work and behaving well was getting, guess what? It is Anti-Bacteria Hand Lotion! I know it may sound strange to you, but he loves the blue dots in Anti-Bacteria Hand Lotion.

Not only doing the lessons at Children’s Hospital, he does have mini lessons at home with me daily. He knows that he gets rewards if he has accomplished his task such as getting a small sticker, and Sugar-Free Icee that he loves.

That’s something I am not repentant myself putting him in a speech therapy lesson at Children’s Hospital. He is very fortunately to have an outstanding therapist who sees what he needs to improve. She also gives me several new ideas to work with him at home. For instance, if your child is able to answer your simple questions, always make comments because it will force a child to express a lot more. It is a lot harder for me not to ask him questions. Rather than forgetting not to ask him questions, I instead would say, “Tell me more about this.” This challenges me but this is an excellent experience for me as a mom, not as an educator.

Even attending both speech therapy and his private pre-school has made differences in his life, he is now speaking less jargons, speaking more clearly, interacting and communicating with others. Lately for a month, I have been getting positive reports from speech therapist, teachers and relatives that he is talking clearly, interacting and making more eye contacts. It felt so good to compare from a year ago to now—yet I will continue to assist him throughout Ryan’s life.