Page 9 - Routines-Based Early Intervention Guidebook

Routines-Based Early Intervention Guidebook

Introduction

This guidebook was developed by a group of bilingual speech‐language pathologists
who have provided therapy services to young children and their families through home‐based
early childhood interven on programs. The goal of many early childhood interven on
programs is to help families to work with their children by incorpora ng language strategies
into their daily rou nes. In this model, it is not uncommon for the speech‐language
pathologist to see a family only one or two mes per month. While this paradigm works well
for a handful of families, we found that many families did not con nue to work on the
ac vi es and strategies that were suggested between therapy sessions. By talking with the
families, we learned that it was not that they did not want to carry out the ac vi es, but that
they could not remember all of the strategies, signs, and other informa on their therapist
shared with them, and they did not always know the ra onale for using them. While we use
these strategies every day with the children and families we work with, this informa on is new
to most of them. Parents benefit from having materials to work with and to serve as
reminders of strategies targeted during therapy.

The content of this program was driven by theory and research in the fields of child
development, communica on development, and early interven on. The lessons and ac vi es
in this book are based on Vygotsky’s (1967) social learning theories. Social learning theories
view social interac on as cri cal to development. Therefore, the family members involved in
early childhood interven on programs are seen as the child’s guides, and the child is the
appren ce who learns from the adult models (Rogoff, 1990). Every strategy and every ac vity
in this book incorporate the family members as important social interac onists and as key
models of communica ve behaviors.

Some very simple principles from theory and research have been incorporated.
Frequency and consistency are two of those principles. Simply put, the more a child hears a
word or phrase, the more likely he or she is to use that phrase. Secondly, the more
consistently a word or phrase achieves the desired outcome, the more likely a child is to use it.
Strategies that drive these two principles include modeling and imita ng. These are very
simple ideas that can produce great change when used frequently and consistently.

Another key component of this guidebook’s success is the use of sign language. Many
parents of children with communica on delays and disorders become very concerned when a
speech‐language pathologist proposes the use of sign language. When probed further about
their concerns, many parents have reported that they are afraid their children will learn to
sign and not learn to talk, or that they will no longer be mo vated to learn to speak if they can
communicate with sign language. Current literature suggests that the use of sign with children
leads to earlier and clearer parent‐child communica on, accelerated spoken language
development, reduced crying and whining, improved parent‐child bonding, and increased
intelligence (Goodwyn, Acredolo, & Brown, 2000; Thompson et al., 2007). Addi onally, Pizer,
Walters, & Meier (2007) found that families of children who learned signs to communicate
stopped using signs when children began to communicate well orally (around 2 years of age).

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