Page 10 - Routines-Based Early Intervention Guidebook

P. 10

Routines-Based Early Intervention Guidebook

While parents may be resistant to the use of signs to help their children develop early
language skills, sharing data about sign use with families may ease concerns and help increase
family par cipa on.

Increasing family par cipa on in therapy increases children’s success in
communica on. The tricky part is how to do it. Obviously, this will vary somewhat from
family to family, but there are a few strategies that have been indicated in the research to
increase family par cipa on. First, it is important that we share with families why we are
sugges ng these changes in how they interact with their child. Families are much more likely
to use suggested strategies if they know why therapists suggest them. A recent study of
Mexican immigrant mothers’ percep ons of their children’s interven on (Kummerer, Lopez‐
Deyna & Hughes, 2007) found that most of the mothers in the study felt that therapists were
just playing with their children. By helping families recognize the important role of play in
development, families are more likely to see play as a way to incorporate new language
strategies. Addi onally, teaching how individual cogni ve skills contribute to language
development, such as understanding that objects s ll exist when they are out of sight, will
encourage families to work on those cogni ve skills in play.

Incorpora ng therapeu c strategies into the rou nes of each family and using toys and
household items in the child's environment have also been found to be eﬀec ve for increasing
family par cipa on and their use of interven on strategies. Home‐based service providers
o en bring in a bag of toys ﬁlled with excellent interven on tools. They then pack up the toys
and leave with the expecta on that families will carry through with all of the sugges ons.
McWilliams (2007) found that families o en a ribute their children’s progress to people
outside of the family (and maybe their toys) rather than to regular interac ons within the
family. Many early childhood interven on programs have encouraged therapists to make use
of what is in each family’s home. This program does this by providing numerous ideas on how
to use household objects to improve communica on.

This book is structured to capitalize on the use of everyday rou nes and household
objects to increase communica on skills. Each lesson is easy to use and easily adapted to each
and every individual family. Each family can be provided with their own handouts that allow
parents to keep track of their child's progress, record ac vi es, and remind them of signs and
important vocabulary words. The parent handouts also provide informa on about typical
language and speech development, and references for the strategies they are beginning to
incorporate into their daily rou nes. The families we have worked with have been very
pleased to have such important informa on at their ﬁnger ps, and we have found that the
families who retain wri en ac vity sugges ons have been much more engaged in the
interven on process than those who have not had comparable informa on.

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15