Parent Coaching: What it is & Why we do it!

If you have a little one in speech and language therapy, we bet you’ve heard of the “parent coaching” concept. When this idea is introduced in therapy, we sometimes get mixed feelings and questions from parents. As speech language pathologists, we are the professionals who are trained to help your little ones grow their communication skills. However, we want them to utilize these skills in experiences outside of the therapy room, and with a variety of people in their environments!

This means that your child will have the most success in growing their communication skills if the strategies we teach in therapy are being implemented at home, on play dates, running errands, at grandma’s house, etc. So, while it’s important that we as clinicians model and use these skills with your little one, it is just as important that we are teaching these strategies to YOU the parent! We want our parents to walk out of each session with the confidence to know you can help your child succeed. This can happen with parent coaching in therapy.

We encourage our parents to attend sessions with little ones for this reason (although we know how tempting it is to drop off and run to Target for 30 minutes!) Read on for the 5 Things You Should Know About Parent Coaching:

1. We need to know what is typical for your child and we do this by observing behavior in play or within daily routines/activities.

2. We will be using specific strategies to increase your child’s communication, but we will also be teaching you these strategies so you can implement them at home.

3. We will be asking you questions to reflect on! We need to know what worked or did not work during the previous week, how your child reacted to strategies implemented at home, or if any strategies were utilized the previous week. Our goal here is to figure out the best way to have carryover of using these language strategies at home.

4. We will give you feedback! It’s so beneficial for us to see how you are modeling language with your child within familiar daily routines and play. It’s also important for you as the parent to hear positive feedback to know that you are on the right track at home. If something is not working, then count on us to provide suggestions for how to alter your behavior with your child in the coming weeks (e.g., “try presenting a choice to your child instead of asking him a yes/no question.”)

5. We will plan with you! It’s important that we review how ‘the plan’ did or did not work since your child’s last treatment session. We often end with a plan for what to try over the next week based on your child’s ability level and difficulties, as well as input from YOU the parent on what we can do to make life a little bit easier for everybody in the house.

 (adapted from Rush & Shelden, 2011).

If we don’t have your buy in on this as the parent, and if strategies are only implemented in the therapy room, we will likely not see the progress we want. Our job here is to ultimately COACH you – the parent - to have the confidence needed to help your child succeed anywhere you go.

Sound overwhelming? We promise that with time and practice, some of these strategies will become new habits.

We love to help both you and your child make progress!

Have questions about what the parent coaching model might look like for your child or how you can become more involved? Please reach out to your therapist – we are here to help!

Source:

Rush & Sheldon, 2011. The Early Childhood Coaching Handbook. Brookes Publishing.