by Karina Rodriguez-Tellaheche, MS CCC-SLP
I love to use books in my therapy sessions. Books are great for many things, including literacy development, increasing joint attention, building social skills and speech development. Using a book to improve your child's speech and language skills is fairly simple, as you will see in my examples below. But first, there are some requirements. Your child will need to stay focused on the book, make sure there are no other distractions. Turn the TV off and hide the more motivating toys. Keep in mind that the younger your child is, the shorter the attention span. Toddlers can only maintain attention for a few minutes, so you will have to choose books that only have a few pages and with bright colors. When choosing books for children with speech delays, it is important to look for books that have repetition, this is one of the techniques speech language pathologists use in therapy. This is because children with delays need to hear a word or phrase multiple times in order to learn it. Repetition also adds predictability, you will notice that after reading the same book several times your child will start to learn the word and fill in the blanks. If your child has been diagnosed with Apraxia, using books with repetition is a very effective technique. Below are other techniques that can help children diagnosed with Apraxia.
First read the book slowly and with lots of emphasis on words, sounds and emotion. Also exaggerate your facial expressions and add hand movements. Using my hands to gesture along with the book, motivates the child to do the same. Be sure to use the same movements, sound and facial expressions every time. After reading the book, the first few times, you may not get much participation, but slowly your child will begin to join in by imitating your hand movements, your facial expressions and slowly your words. I also pause before some key words and allow the child a chance to fill in the blank. After a few tries, they will! Be as fun and silly while reading, this will motivate your child to sit and look at the book with you. So until your child becomes an avid reader, you will need to provide the motivation.
Here is my list of top 5 books for promoting speech development. These books are available on Amazon.com. If you click on the tittle it will direct you to the link.
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I hope you find this list of top books for speech delays useful and that you are able to use it with your child daily. Please be sure to comment if you have any questions or need further clarification on how to use these books.
Be sure to read my other posts on speech development :
Top 10 Apps for Speech and Fine Motor Development
Increasing Your Child's Vocabulary
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Thanks For Reading!
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