GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Parents whose children have speech and language development delay expect rapid progress after a month or two from the beginning of speech therapy. Children with developmental dysphasia should continuously have therapy with a speech therapist. And that means, sometimes, if it is a more severe form of developmental dysphasia, 3-4 years.

DELAYED START OF SPEECH THERAPY

Sometimes parents rely on the advice of the environment, listening to the following phrases, “he will speak”, “it is still early for the speech therapist”, “he is a boy and our child also started speaking later”.

RELYING ONLY ON THE WORK OF THE SPEECH THERAPIST WITH THE CHILD

It is wrong to think that your child’s speech and language development will improve with speech therapy only. Your child's progress depends solely on you. A speech therapist is here to advise and train you on how and what you should do with your child. When you should concentrate on a certain type of exercise, and when you should wait to start practicing certain activities. For example, we do not start with exercises for the articulation of voices, if the child does not yet produce grammatically correct sentences in his/her speech.

TOO MANY ACTIVITIES

My advice is that parents should enroll their child in one or two activities. For example, sport, as it helps children with motor skills and better socialization. But if the child goes to more activities, it can tire the child and he/she may have difficulties to concentrate on working with the speech therapist and the speech therapy will not be productive.

LONG BREAKS AND DISCONTINUITY OF SPEECH THERAPY

The most important factor affecting the success of speech therapy is the long breaks during the summer break and during the holidays. If the child is 3 years old, has started speaking late, and he/she has grammatically incorrect sentences, long pauses of two or three months are not allowed. The child should have breaks and enjoy the holidays, but it should not last longer than 3, 4 weeks.