Episode 94: The Power of Family: Why Parental Involvement Shapes Therapy Success

Hi, welcome to another episode of Studying, De-Mistified, and Beyond. This is your host, Laurie Milnitsky, Studying Specialist, Motivational Coach, a speech language pathologist. And today I'm going to talk about a very important topic and that do we work with our children enough to stutter how we involve in their therapy. And this is vitally important, communication is key, but it cannot be practiced alone and it cannot be practiced once a week, just will not work. Why? Because when you are working on stuttering, you are not just working on their stuttering skills or their fluency skills. You are working on hooching, encouraging confidence, possibly combating some teasing they're getting at school. It is not enough for children, even adults to practice on their own. You can't stress that enough if you don't know what's going on in your child's therapy then cannot implement it with them at home, excuse me, or have not observed it then they're not going to show much progress. So I'm curious how many of you have not been able to observe because it's not easy if they're in a school, they're in a school and there isn't time to observe and many times even if you can, they're in a group. So due to confidentiality laws, you're not allowed to and not everyone who worked with stuttering knows how, they don't know how to do it, they don't know how to teach them how to not just improve fluency but they're not experienced in any kind of counseling or coaching. That was something actually I learned as a speech pathologist of early on because I was lucky enough to work with a few speech pathologists who spent a lot of time coaching and encouraging people and I realized the importance of making a connection with somebody, of listening and not probing so much, I'm working with parents because I work with many parents of children with ADHD, with some social issues, it's experience that I worked hard to get over years of training. So I'm just going to ask you, do you know how to work with your child at home or even if your child's getting outside therapy, do you know, are you involved in the therapy process? I can't stress enough that the more you're involved, also children feel that presence of having you there, also are you the only one in the family involved because communication spans many settings, many populations, many people, it's vitally important, there are other skills besides fluency strategies, there's ways of looking in the person in the eye, there's ways of speaking louder, there's ways of being more confident, there's ways of advocating for yourself and they're going to learn from your example. Also as a parent, as a caregiver, the more involved you are, the less anxiety you have because you know that you're doing something to help them. There are many ways of improving communication but the more involved the family is in a productive manner, the more progress that you're going to see with your child. So if you're doing, you know, if your child didn't speech for like five years and you're not seeing any progress, there's a reason why. Sometimes just being in speech once a week in a school setting is just not the answer. And speech pathologists in a school setting, you know, often are limited how many times they can provide speech or if they can provide it one on one and they might not like have someone in the school system to work on stuttering and that's not not to say for everybody, there might be many instances in a school where they have the experience but they don't have the time, often to have a lot of parent teacher, I mean, it's an academic school setting, it is a medical and stuttering often falls more into a category of medical. I often talk many years ago about a speech therapist I had who I saw privately, who really worked with me a lot more on coaching. I learned so much from this man at the time, I did not think it was helping me at all and but he did have me bring in a friend where I was very scared, it was not something I really wanted to do. I think I was in high school, I'm still friends with her in the house so it's a bond I think that will always have and he sort of talked to us about stuttering, how kids are different, he talked about that my friend were glasses and how we all have our own thing in life. It sort of brought it out in the open, he got my parents more involved, he did not actually work on fluency strategies at all which I had him move on from because I was really having a very hard time communicating with others and it was affecting me but I do remember him saying like do you think you can be a teacher, do you think you can go out there and order your own food, how do you feel about stuttering? So it's something interesting, I don't know if I thought about it that much at the time but I do think about it now. The more your parents are involved it doesn't have to be a direct involvement but the more you feel like they're on your side it's like a win-win and there are settings and there are ways of teaching our kids how to believe in themselves and offer a safe place and that's where the coaching component of speech therapy comes in that only a small part of us have. It's vitally important also listening, it's difficult with your own children, I have two older daughters and I have to admit I want to fix everything, I want to make it easier on them, I want life to be easy and I can't do that, it's something I've learned through my own therapy, through my own coaching process that I have to listen more, it's something I'm still learning, I still tend to jump in when I meet people but as a family that's what we're there for so I'm going to ask you again are you involved enough and it's not to say that it's your fault or not your fault or anyone's fault it's just I'm just asking you are you involved in your therapy what I've started to do more of and this works better believe it or not when I see people online I will work with them and have their parents come in at the end and it works very well more so in the elementary and middle school years. High schoolers are much harder because they often don't want their families involved but I try and stress to them that communication is not done in a box that's what communication is it's speaking to others it's working things out it's learning how to go and job interviews it's learning how to do presentations so which I have to say just to it and I think presentations are more fall under if you're in high school of public speaking it's not that easy for people to public speak as we all know it's really really hard so that these are skills we have to learn so I just wanted to share with you that I would be great somehow you're involved in the therapy process if you are a parent of a preschooler you should always be involved in the therapy room if you are not in the room and you don't know what your child is doing in therapy then something is wrong and something's wrong because that in itself studying is so environmentally challenged that you have to know how to work with them at home I can't stress that enough so in the preschool years you have to be involved in the therapy process I might be kind of outspoken about this but I don't believe in just sending an therapist into a school to work on studying therapy I don't see it has been effective so I wanted to share this all with you and I know I'm a parent also we can't it's very challenging I have a younger daughter who is doing unbelievable now but in school she really found it hard and I was not able to be involved with reading with some challenges and it was only when she got older that I was able to so I want to thank you for listening if I can help you please you can email me or check out my website all a l l all island speech dot com have a great day.