Do-It-Yourself Speech Therapy for Toddlers
There are so many reasons families look for do-it-yourself speech therapy ideas for their toddlers! Whether you’re here because your child didn’t qualify for free services, because you’re stuck on a loooong waitlist, because your child is in speech therapy but you want to do more at home, or because you live somewhere that doesn’t have easy access to services...we can absolutely help. And we are totally celebrating you for wanting to do as much as possible for your family!
Parent Involvement Is Everything
Let us start by saying that your involvement as a parent is soooo important when it comes to helping children learn to talk and communicate. So by being here now, learning how you can do more at home, you’re already 10 steps ahead of the game.
As a parent, you’re with your child far more than we, the speech-language pathologists, could ever be! Plus, know your child best. You understand their language, you know what they’re capable of, and you have that parent intuition to guide you in case anything ever feels off.
We think it’s great that you want to learn all you can and help your toddler from home because you play a key role in the therapy process!
How To DIY Speech Therapy
There are three key steps to take if you want do-it-yourself speech therapy ideas you can successfully use at home:
#1 Get An Assessment (If You Can)
We know this sounds counterintuitive in a do-it-yourself speech therapy post, but hear us out!
The first step to doing great speech therapy work yourself at home is understanding what skills your child needs help with. It may seem like it’s enough to say, “My child talks a lot less than kids his age.” Or, “He’s almost two and not saying much yet!” But speech is super complex. It looks like one big skill—but it’s actually made up of a lot of smaller, foundational skills. So it’s important to understand which specific skills your toddler needs support with before getting started.
If you can, we recommend getting a speech and language evaluation (AKA an assessment) so a licensed professional can walk you through this complex part. Oftentimes, evaluations will include recommendations specific to your child, which will give you a great place to start. But, we understand that this might not be readily accessible to you or the wait may be long. So if for any reason you can’t get an evaluation, just keep going with the information below. You’ll still be better off than you would be if you took the “wait and see what happens” approach with your child.
Related: How Many Words Should My Toddler Be Saying?
#2 Know The Milestones
Download our free language milestones checklist to give yourself a list of skills to work on with your little one—skills we work on a lot in speech therapy with toddlers!
Again, there are MANY skills that develop before a child starts to speak. Toddlers have to be interacting with us, understanding the things we say, and using gestures (among many other skills) before they ever say a single word! So by addressing all the little skills included on this checklist, you can feel good knowing that you’re not skipping over important foundational skills needed for language development.
#3 Find Tools & Resources
As much as we wish we could, it’s impossible for us to cover every aspect of the skills your child might need to work at home in a blog post or a handout. But, good news: That’s exactly why we created our TalkToddler Community!
TalkToddler is for parents like you: Parents who care and want to be involved in the process. Parents who realize they are an important piece of this puzzle. If you can’t access speech therapy and want to do as much as you can to support your little one’s progress along language milestones at home, we can help guide you along the way. (At a much more affordable price than private speech and language therapy, which can cost $100+ per session!) Definitely check it out if you’re looking to do more at home.
Beyond TalkToddler, you might also love these blog posts:
Don’t Forget To Download The Milestones Checklist!
Learn what skills your child has down pat, which ones they’re learning now, and what’s coming next. Understanding language milestones is key to supporting your child’s communication development at home!