Speech therapy parent handouts for the early intervention population can be an absolute life saver. But, do you really just want to send home any old handout? I don’t.
Let me confess something:I used to be a tad judgy about how parents would “work” with their kids at home. I could never quite figure out why parents would appear to only focus on teaching their kids the ABC’s but seemed to ignore more functional language skills. (If you are a parent reading this, I humbly ask your forgiveness for my previous ignorance.)
All of that changed in March of 2017 when I had my first child. “I will be different from other moms”, I told myself pridefully, “I will do everything right.” Go ahead. Laugh. Roll your eyes. It’s fine. If you have read any of my other blog posts or emails you know I have been humbled many times in recent years.
Here’s the thing. Being a mom painfully opens your eyes to the fact that you can’t do “everything right”. For starters the very definition of “everything right” changes drastically depending on which expert you are asking. But more importantly, we are all human. We are made to be imperfect and exhaustible creatures who need rest and have a finite list of capabilities.
I could right an entire post on this alone, but let me segue into the actual topic of this post: helping parents build language skills at home. You see, I am in a unique situation as I am writing this post. I am currently the mom of a 2- and 3-year-old. There are a few years of SLP’ing under my belt, and I am a TpT’er with the skills and knowledge to create helpful resources.
I am piling these metaphorical hats on my head to create handouts for parents who are in this life stage with me.
But these are not like any other early intervention parent handout you have given out. These handouts were made by someone currently in the trenches of parenting littles. I now know exactly how hard it is to do #allthethings.
Here is how these Early Intervention Speech Therapy Parent Handouts work:
- These handouts explain the language strategy and breaks it down using simple language, easy to follow steps, and clear examples.
- Each handout provides prompts to guide parents through visualizing what each specific strategy would look like in their home, with their child.
- There is a space to physically write out a plan for successfully implementing each strategy.
- The best part of this resource though, is that I give my very own SLP-Mom tips.
There are over 25 pages of practical, non-judgy, SLP Mom approved tips and tricks for teaching language at home. All you have to is print them off and send them home. There is an English version, a Spanish version, and a bundle that has them both for a discount!
Oh! I also have an entire series of videos where I am personally teaching how to use some of these strategies. Feel free to pass it along to anyone that is looking for ideas of ways to do speech therapy type activities at home with their little one!
Ok, before I sign off let me loop back around to that first thought. I now know that those parents who were fixating on the ABC’s were just doing their best. The truth was, I was letting those parents down by not having appropriate resources to help them! They were working on what they knew to do-and that should be applauded! I wish I had had these handouts then, so I could confidently hand them something that I knew could make a difference.
Now, if you know me, you know I value transparency in everything I post, say, and do. So, I hope that you find the honesty and growth in my story and can relate to it and not hold my previous judgy-ness against me.