Fun and Functional: Two Questions Auditory Verbal Professionals Should Ask Themselves
When choosing activities for therapy, ask yourself two questions:
The FUN question: “Is this something a peer with typical hearing would be doing at this age?”
If the answer is “no”… why are you doing it?
and
The FUNCTIONAL question: “Why is the child doing this?“
If the answer is “because I said so”… why are you doing it?
Think about a typical “listen and pick” activity (“get the X, get the Y”). This is very dry and not so purposeful. Instead, consider how could we make the same activity, with the same goal, meaningful? Clean up can be an exercise in auditory list memory (e.g., if you’ve been dressing a doll, you can request, “Please hand me the shoes and the coat” while you’re packing away the clothing). So can pretending to go shopping (or actually going shopping, if you have the luxury of doing therapy outside of the therapy room!).
If you’re working on auditory discrimination (e.g., long vs. short sounds, or “moo” for the cow vs. “woof woof woof” for the dog), why not have the child select the animal that will show up on the next page of a story you’re reading (with the pictures facing away from the child until he’s selected the animal, of course, to keep it an auditory task).
The same can be said for speech babble. In its most traditional form, children repeat strings of babble while… putting rings on a ring stacker? Speaking into a toy microphone? Scribbling on paper? The theory behind speech babble (being developmental, not remedial; developing rapid automaticity for transitions between phonemes in multisyllabic strings) is solid. But this implementation? Not so fun, not so functional. Now, lest you think I’m judging, I used to do speech babble this way, too! In fact, it took a very honest, straight-shooting mom to help me see the error of my ways. Midway through a speech babble activity with her toddler where I said some nonsense “into” a ring, handed it to the mother to repeat, and then she handed it to her son (to hopefully repeat and put on the ring stacker), she turned to me and said, “You know, I don’t think he really likes this that much.”
You know, I don’t think he really likes this that much”
I kept my composure in the session and pivoted to the next activity, but can I tell you that as a first- or second-year SLP I just about died in that moment? But in retrospect, I’m so grateful to her for her candor. It’s true. The activity was boring as all get-out. Her son didn’t like it. And good for her for speaking up!
Now, if I want to help a child work on rapid automaticity, I sing a song (what are “E-I-E-I-O in Old MacDonald or “bibidi-bobbidi-boo” from Cinderella if not speech babble?), or say a magic word to open a treasure chest (abracadabra! hocus pocus!), or read a book with lots of fun wordplay and nonsense words.
Make it functional, keep it fun!
Are you a professional looking for ideas on how to create fun and functional listening and spoken language intervention by working smarter, not harder? Check out my One Lesson, Five Levels webinar!
