Speech therapy

#speech therapy#speech practice#talking#pronunciation#exercise

Speech therapy means practising exactly the thing that already feels difficult, with an adult listening closely to every sound. The visual support below makes the session easy to survey, so a child can see how many exercises are left.

A boy speaks and points towards his mouth next to a speech bubble with sound waves.

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Boy practising speech

A boy speaks and points towards his mouth next to a speech bubble with sound waves.

About this visual support

Speech therapy differs from most other practice in one respect: the thing being trained is precisely the thing that already feels hard. Every repetition points at the gap between what the child wants to say and what actually comes out, and all the while an adult sits alongside, listening attentively to each sound.

Visual support shifts part of the attention away from performance and onto structure. When a session is made up of four pictures in a row, it becomes clear that this is four bounded tasks rather than an open-ended examination of how the child speaks. The pictures also make it easier to stop on time, since the end is visible from the start instead of something you negotiate once the energy has already run out.

One tip that usually lowers the pressure: include one exercise the child picks, ideally a sound or word that already works. Succeeding at something straight away changes the tone of everything that follows. In the Routined app you can build the order of exercises and set a time for each one, with fourteen days to try before the subscription starts.