Let's Pause Together and Play Together
As we prepare our lives for two weeks of national pause, we in the clinic are excited about the opportunity to visit your homes virtually. We get the chance now to see you put into practice all the skills you have been learning in therapy, but now within your natural everyday environments.
We as therapists work together with you and your family so that everyone can learn the skills that will support your child’s development throughout their daily activities. We’re not just therapists, but we serve the role of “parent coach,” providing guidance to allow you to implement each strategy effectively, and continue to put them into practice across other environments until your next session.
The Parent Coaching model is an evidence based model which involves:
Observing the parent and child engaged in the typical routine or activity and, if necessary, giving the parent an opportunity to learn from observing the therapist model a new strategy with the child.
Giving the parent opportunities to practice new strategies with the child as part of the activity.
Prompting the parent’s reflection on what is or isn’t working (and why), and generating new ideas.
Providing feedback by sharing ideas and information.
Joint planning with the parent on their work between visits to foster child learning and prepare for the next visit.
All of our therapists have undergone extensive training to provide this model both face to face and virtually, and have also completed specialised training for special populations such as autism, disfluency, and speech sound disorders.
We have had some parents express concern that their little one isn’t going to sit still and focus on a screen for the whole session. However this isn’t our intention for this type of therapy. Our goal is for the child’s focus to be on you as their interaction/communication partner, whether the session is play based or focused on building language through a particular daily routine. We’re just going to be the voice in your ear (screen) guiding you through the process.
Over the next few days think of some of the routines or activities at home that you may need some support to add language or get more interaction/engagement and share them with your therapist. We look forward to working with you in your homes and finding new ways to support you in this environment.
