Why we play in speech therapy
By Allanah Dart - Speech Pathologist
Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels
As speech pathologists, we work hard each session to engage with the children we see and try our best to make each session meaningful and helpful. A large percentage of our time in sessions, with our younger clients, is spent engaging in play. This can look like many different things, all targeting the same outcome – to teach them, develop their communication, problem solving and social skills.
We know children learn about the world around them through play. Play develops their physical, cognitive, emotional and social development.
We can use play to teach concepts, introduce new language or even speech sounds in meaningful ways. When we can show a child what a word means, through play and demonstration, or teach a fun way to learn a new sound through play, it encourages and promotes children to engage and remain engaged, it helps with retention of the information being taught and leads to opportunities to generalise these ideas.
Play encourages children to learn social skills through being able to be a leader and show others what to do while also learn to listen to others’ ideas and learn from others too. Play can also help children to learn how to take turns which is so important when developing communication and friendships! Play is also a great way to teach children how to process winning and losing. This, for so many of our children, can be really hard to navigate.
When we play with the children we see, we often aim to use everyday common toys that most families would have within their homes or even things they can find when out-and-about. Play can happen anywhere and at any time so we love to ensure that our play is relevant for our children and is also something that parents can do while spending time with their young ones.
Lastly, playing is fun! We all know that when we have fun, we remember it! Fun is linked to learning and research has shown how positively our brains respond to having fun. It can help improve attention, memory, creativity and so much more.
