How Speech Therapy Can Help Your Child’s Verbal Development
Sep 11 2018
Many people believe that speech therapy is only useful for children with speech or language disorders. While speech therapy is an excellent option to help these children, speech therapy can also help kids develop confidence, build their vocabulary, and establish strong social skills.
Parents play an important role in a child’s language development – studies have shown that children who are read to and spoken with learn a great deal more during early childhood and have a larger vocabulary and better grammar than those who aren’t.
But parents can also look to speech therapy to nurture their child’s language development — here are just some of the many ways speech therapy can help your child:
Speech Therapy Teaches Children How to Communicate Their Feelings
For children who are just learning to form words, speech therapy can help them find ways to talk to those around them. Speech therapy can help children learn to express their wants, needs, and desires, and find ways to communicate with others, even without words.
As a result, your child can begin to develop confidence in their verbal, and non-verbal, communication abilities. They can begin to develop self-esteem knowing that they are able to interact with their parents and peers, and may feel safer in the world with these stronger communication strategies.
Speech Therapy Helps with Language Development
Speech therapy improves learning and using the English language. A speech therapist will work with your child to improve comprehension, word sequencing, pronoun usage, proper grammar, and much more.
Language development exercises in speech therapy build a strong foundation for your child’s future communication abilities, which will help them throughout the rest of their life.
Speech Therapy Can Improve Social Skills
Developing strong social skills is important for children. Children will need to interact with their peers and adults in various settings. Speech therapy can accelerate social skill development and further boost confidence as well.
A speech therapist can help your child to understand and participate in conversations with those around them; how to interact with and interpret the world; and how to express to others what they see, feel, and experience.
How Parents Help
Along with speech therapy, parents play a critical role in their child’s verbal development. Luckily, there are some simple ways to actively participate in helping your child develop stronger language skills:
- Talk to your child: Never stop talking to your child. Narrate the day as it goes on – explain to them each activity you’re enjoying together. Point out objects, locations, signs, etc. and explain to them, in detail, what they mean. <br><br>
- Read with your child: Reading can happen throughout the day, not just at bedtime. Enjoy short stories together after lunch, before a nap, first thing in the morning. Reading as much as possible can help your child develop a strong vocabulary and build literacy.
- Listen to music together: Sing lively songs – singing helps your child use words, learn language patterns, and express themselves. Singing songs also helps build your child’s memory and makes speaking fun!
- Avoid spending too much time on the computer and limit TV: Some educational programming can be beneficial for children over two-years-old, but television shows don’t provide direct interaction, which children need for proper verbal development.
- Follow your child’s lead: if your child shows a particular interest in a subject, keep talking about it! Ask them questions about it – this gives them the opportunity to express themselves, which also helps them build confidence.
At tuLIPS Speech Therapy, we love working with parents and children of all ages in language development, confidence building, and strengthening social skills.
Contact us at hello@tulipstherapy.com to learn more about how we can help, or you can schedule a consultation by calling us at (415) 567-8133. We look forward to speaking with you soon!