Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what makes up a great early language therapy session. My take is that we can create a solid foundation for intervention with any child by starting with several key elements. These are the things we know work for all emerging communicators regardless of their diagnosis or language development profile.
The new Early Language Therapy Blueprint resource describes 10 practices that create a positive environment for therapy and support communication skills and healthy brain development for all children. These ten practices are outlined below:
Start with connection and co-regulation.
Build an authentic connection through joyful, child-led interactions. Offer co-regulation support by providing a warm and responsive relationship, modifying the environment as needed, and providing support to accommodate sensory differences (ideally with OT support).
Take a relationship-based approach.
Honor the child’s autonomy and embrace mutual respect and dignity. Hold boundaries with kindness and invite cooperation by using silliness, singing a song, letting them help, or giving them choices. Provide encouragement and help children feel a sense of connection.
Focus on the family.
Support families within the context of their cultural values and individual differences. Honor their choices and preferences. Adapt your approach to meet their needs. Ensure that the intervention is aligned with their values.
Prioritize child-led interactions.
Follow their lead- wait and watch to see how they choose to play before joining in. When we follow a child's lead, we prioritize connection over compliance. Child-led interactions lead to increased engagement and create more opportunities for social reciprocity.
Incorporate responsiveness strategies.
Honor all communication. Notice all of the ways a child is communicating with you and respond accordingly. Talk about what catches their attention. Serve and return- respond to what the child is doing and then pause to give them a chance to respond to you.
Deliver high-quality input.
Model language based on the child’s interests and cues. Use rich intonation and adult-like grammar. Incorporate singing and reading. Individualize your input based on the support needs of each child.
Build on strengths and interests.
Use a strengths-based caregiver questionnaire to gather information on the child’s strengths and favorite things. Identify what the child is doing well and build on current skills. Incorporate the child’s interests and preferred activities into your therapy sessions.
Provide access to AAC.
Provide access to augmentative and alternative forms of communication. Incorporate no-tech, mid-tech, lite-tech, and high tech AAC (ex: gestures, recordable buttons, core boards, iPad apps, etc.) as appropriate. Presume competence and focus on robust AAC options.
Coach the caregivers.
Empower caregivers to take an active role in their child’s intervention. Get them involved by incorporating opportunities for observation, active practice, reflective questions, and feedback. Use joint planning to get caregivers involved in providing support at home between sessions.
Utilize play-based and routines-based therapy.
Identify evidence-based strategies to support your therapy objectives and embed these strategies into preferred play activities or daily routines.
You can not go wrong if you start with these key practices as a foundation and integrate additional intervention strategies that are individualized based on the support needs of each child! You can get your printable copy of the Early Language Therapy Blueprint below.
If you want to learn more about how to select and implement individualized intervention strategies for emerging communicators, you belong in The First 50 Words Course for SLPs! This ASHA-approved course for pediatric SLPs is self-paced and includes 7.5 hours of professional development and over 100 printable resources to support your therapy objectives and parent coaching practice.
Registration for the fall cohort closes on Friday, October 4th and the course will not be open for enrollment again until 2025.
Talk soon!
Laura Brown, MA, CCC-SLP