When you think of what a Speech Pathology or Occupational Therapy session looks like, you might think of the therapist working one-on-one with a child and then maybe some ideas or homework sheets provided to the family at the end.
Some sessions may look like this however we wanted to highlight the importance of working WITH parents and carers.
How do therapists support parents in intervention?
The most important part of early intervention is support that is provided to the family. A child attends therapy for just one or two hours a week. If we can support parents to provide therapy at home during mealtimes, bathtime, getting dressed, playtime, driving in the car etc, your child is getting therapy for maybe 30 hours a week! This is when you will see magic happen for your child.
- Listen: A therapist’s job is to listen. To hear all of the achievements, the difficulties and the questions asked to better understand how each child fits into their family. Some sessions there may not be much to report and other times this may make up the whole session. Therapists are there to listen first.
- Support: After hearing any concerns the therapist is then able to work with the family to address any new situations that have come up. This includes brainstorming together ideas that may be helpful to trial in the home or community or further discussion to understand diagnosis or assessment results, Support may also include referral to additional professionals, guidance towards resources (e.g. parent courses, community groups or physical resources for purchase). Parents may also want to discuss locating services for themselves to ensure that they are getting the personal support required to be able to help their child. This may include direction to mental health support, connecting with other parents or referring to community groups.
- Coaching: Therapists provide coaching in each session to ensure that the caregivers feel confident doing at home, what has been practiced in therapy sessions. We know that just watching a therapist do activities is not enough to ensure that families will feel confident doing the same activities in the same way at home. If it was that easy, we would all be awesome golf players from watching Tiger Woods!! All of us need to practice when we learn new things. Therefore, therapy sessions are a valuable time to have a go implementing strategies and talk through with your therapist how it felt. Each new therapy session is a chance to talk about the strategies that were provided in the previous session and the parent and therapist can then work together to find out what went well, what needs more time and any questions you might have. When parents feel confident using strategies outside of the session, this is where it will make a true difference for the child’s progress towards their goals.
It is important to remember that therapy looks different for everyone but parent and family support is the most important part of therapy. At My Therapy Space, we love working together with our families to best support their children and help them to achieve the very best they can.