Giving Kids Choice and Control in Motor Speech Therapy

Full transcript

Hi, it's Nicole from the NYU Motor Speech Lab, coming in to give you a quick tidbit on how you can get your motor speech kiddos to be a bit more compliant.

We know this is hard work. We know speech is hard for them. Overall, there's this loss of control over their articulators, and that can feel really overwhelming and frustrating. So something I'm always thinking about is: how can I give control back to them within the context of our therapy session, so that they can feel good about themselves? Because let's face it, we're kind of controlling everything.

So what do I do? I give them a choice as to which reinforcer they want to play with, maybe in between the blocks or after the session. I'll give them a choice of what chair they want to sit in, or where they want to sit in the room. I'll give them an opportunity to pick out what word they want to work on. Usually they're aware of the words they're working on, so I'll say, "You know what, we have to work on X, Y, or Z. Which one would you like to do?"

In that same vein, when we talk about varying prosody, I'll say, "Okay, how do you want to say the word now? Do you want to say it happy? Do you want to say it mad? Do you want to say it sad?" I give them an opportunity to tell me how they want to do it.

And sometimes I'll say, "Okay, how many times are we going to say this word? Are we going to say it five times? Six times?" They'll tell me, and then I'll try to sneak in a little bit more.

It's this overall feeling that they have a little bit of choice and control within the session that makes them more willing to comply.