Teach Your Child Speech Sounds
2. Behavior and Motivation
Behavior and Motivation
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I’m going to start by talking about behavior and motivation, because if you can’t get your child to practice, none of the rest of this course will matter!
Somehow you have to get your child to buy into this speech practice thing. You have to make the time they spend with you positive and rewarding. Rewards and praise are good things! Verbal encouragement means a lot to kids when it is done sincerely. Act genuinely excited when your child produces a sound correctly, or even when he gets close to it. Young children are hardwired to please you. A skittle or other small reward can go a long way to keeping your child motivated to learn as well. When I first started out, I was helping an SLP who passed out two skittles to each child at the end of the speech session. I was really shocked that the children seemed so excited to pick out two different colors of skittles or m&ms. In my mind, it wasn’t very much of a reward for working for 15-20 minutes. But in the childrens’ minds, it was awesome! So when I started working at my own school, I implemented the two skittle strategy as well. (I tried m&ms, but I ended up eating them all. So I switched to non-chocolate rewards!)
Verbal praise during the session and a small reward at the end can go a long way to motivate your child to practice with you. But at the end of the day, you want to make your sessions intrinsically rewarding – you want them to just enjoy that time with you so that they will practice hard to please you.
Humor can also be an important part of therapy. If the child can relax and laugh at you and herself, she won’t be afraid to try new things. And you’ll both have more fun during the practice session. Bonus!
For instance, I will often make funny noises or facial expressions in response to a child’s ‘bloopers’. Now, this is not intended to make fun of the child, and I don’t do this when the child is first learning the sound. But if a child has been producing the sound correctly for a while and then slips up, I might do a Scooby-Doo type noise and look at them in a funny way so that they realize what they did. They laugh at themselves and then we all move on. For instance, say the child has been working on ‘TH’ in conversation. She’s telling a story and she says “We went to duh store yesterday and we…” I might open my eyes wide, tilt my head, and make the funny sound to get her attention. Usually they will catch their error, and then repeat the sentence correctly. It’s good for them to have a fearless attitude towards making mistakes, because they will make LOTS of mistakes. Especially when learning a difficult sound like ‘Vocalic R’, they can’t be afraid to try it over and over and not get it right until the 100th or 1000th time. Realistically, that’s how long it might take.
What do you do when your child gets frustrated during a speech session? First of all, don’t be surprised. This WILL happen. Just play it cool. Take a break or switch things up. Read a story to her, emphasizing the target speech sound as you read. Have her name all the things she can see in the room that begin with that sound.
Try working on a different sound for a while. Always encourage and reward your child for trying, regardless of how well she is producing the sound.
Let’s talk about working with preschoolers for a minute. We know that the earlier you start teaching kids, the better the outcome. But how can you make this a positive experience?
Well, with very young children, keep your expectations reasonable. It’s like teaching a kid to like peas – they might not like them the first time they’re offered, but you keep trying. Sneak a couple into the lasagna and see what happens. Same thing with speech practice. Work small sessions in here and there. You may find that dedicated speech sessions don’t work well, but informal practice sessions do! (See descriptions for each type below.)
Don’t give up! Eventually these strategies will pay off and your child will enjoy practicing speech with you.