I know we’re all busy and don’t need yet another thing added to our to-do list, so I’m excited to let you know how I help my families get results with their children’s speech development by hooking speech practice onto things they’re already doing every day.

You’re more likely to do something and have it become a habit if you connect it onto something you are already doing. This is key to what I’m going to cover in this article. We’re going to have a think about things that we are already doing every day, or most days and figure out how we can turn these into a speech practice activity.

The times that I tend to recommend to parents that naturally lend themselves to working on speech are:
- teeth brushing, 
- travel to and from school or childcare, 
- focused time with your children, e.g. when they’re telling you about their day, or sitting down and playing with them or homework time, 
- meal times. 

You’ll notice that these are all activities that tend to happen most days, and most NEED to happen.

So let’s go through each time and I’ll let you know what I recommend for each.

Teeth brushing times:
This time is really good when you are just starting to work on a speech sound. Reason being that you brush your teeth twice a day, it is a quick and finite activity (especially if your children are anything like mine) and your child tends to be in front of the mirror, so they can see their face. 

So to turn this into a speech practice activity, stand so your child can see their face and yours in the mirror. Start off by making some funny faces and noises together. You might blow a raspberry, see if you can lick your nose, stuff like that. Then, practice some speech sounds your child is having difficulty with, or that you are focusing on in Speech Therapy. Talk about where your tongue, teeth and lips go and what the air is doing. For example, for the F sound, you might say something like “top teeth on bottom lip, hiss the air out.” This is made easier by the fact that they can see their mouth and yours. 

Just make this a quick and fun activity, but if you do it each time you brush your teeth, you’re getting two quick practices in a day. Magic!

Travel to and from school and childcare: 
Perhaps you walk, or drive. I always want your main focus to be on safety and the road, but if you find yourself waiting at traffic lights, or on a quiet road, you could take a moment to do some speech practice activities with your child. 

Playing i-spy can be a really good one, as it gets your child thinking about the letters and the sounds. You can also play i-spy using sounds rather than letters, e.g. “I spy something beginning with sssss.” If you pick words that start with a sound your child is having difficulty with, this gives them plenty of opportunities to practice saying words with the sound in it.

Playing or talking with your child:
This is a great opportunity to use the recasting technique if you hear your child say a sound or word incorrectly. I have a handout on what this technique is and how to use it, which you can download here. Basically, it’s trying to repeat the word your child said incorrectly as many times as you can in one minute, in the correct way, so they hear it said correctly lots of times. There is evidence to show that this can have a positive effect on the way your child hears and makes the speech sounds you focus on, if done regularly.

When playing with your child, you might also choose a game or toys that have things that contain the sound the child is working on in them, so you have the opportunity to say them lots of times. So if you were playing with animals, and your child needed help with the S sound, you might choose a horse, because that ends in S, you might choose a snake because that starts in S and you can also make the sssss sound for the snake. 

If you hear your child make a sound incorrectly during play or conversation, you can remodel the sound for them, so if they say “horth” you can say “horse.” You might occasionally ask them to try the sound you’re working on, so you might ask them to put their tongue behind their teeth and hiss the air out for the snake sound. Not too many times, as we don’t want to interrupt the flow of your play or conversation, and make your child frustrated.

Homework:

If you have an older child and they have homework for school, then structured speech therapy activities are a good one to hook on to this: you’re already sitting down and doing work, so why not stay a few extra minutes and do a speech therapy task too. This would usually be if you have a Speech Language Therapist guiding you, or you are following a programme like my speech sound courses, available to purchase here.

I also have a handout of speech games to play, which can be great, fun activities to do at the end of homework times, so if you haven’t downloaded it already, I encourage you to download it now. Make sure you subscribe to my email list while you’re there, so I can notify you when I bring more resources out.

Meal times:
The reason I recommend this time is because it’s something that happens every day. The family usually sits down together for breakfast, lunch, dinner and sometimes a morning or afternoon tea snack.

When your mouth is full is not a great time to practice speech, (!) but when I have a child who is a bit further along on their speech journey and they need to focus on shifting what they have learned into their everyday talking, I usually recommend that they choose a time like a meal time as a prompt for them to remember to focus on their speech.

For older children, who are able to take more responsibility, I suggest they pick morning tea time or the first ten minutes of lunch at school to think about how they are using the sounds they’ve been working on when they’re talking with their friends.

So if they are going to say something at the dinner table, or when eating with their friends, they can make sure their mouth is clear first and focus on using the speech sound they’ve been working on correctly. Parents can also use this time to ask the child for corrections of the sound, with the child’s prior permission (I suggest negotiating this with them before you start.)

I hope you find this useful and can see ways that you can start using your everyday routines to hook speech therapy practice onto, so it doesn't feel like yet another task on your to do list.

If you would like more support like this, check out my annual membership, where there's weekly bite-sized trainings, with strategies that you can use straight away, fortnightly group calls, where you can ask questions about your child, a one hour video call with me that you can use at any time, access to a speech sound video course of your choice and all my handouts.