Let’s dedicate a blog post to a very important and practical question: “how long does speech therapy take to work?” The short answer is, and I must be honest…I don’t know, nor does any speech-language pathologist (SLP). But there are several factors that affect how long you should expect therapy to take:
- the nature of your child’s speech challenge;
- the severity of that challenge;
- whether your child is also working through other learning or behavioral challenges;
- the competence of your therapist;
- and how involved you, as a parent, are.
I will touch on each of these factors and include simple, actionable suggestions to make therapy as efficient as possible. This is a crucial issue not only because speeding up the therapy process can save money and time. Also, having an idea of how long therapy will take, and how we can move things along, can give all stakeholders in therapy a better sense of the process. But perhaps most importantly, understanding these factors can keep children and families maximally motivated (i.e. “bought in”). I believe maximal understanding will yield optimal results — something we are all working toward.
What is your child’s speech or language challenge?
What is the primary thing(s) your child is finding challenging regarding speech and language? Is it speech clarity? Does he or she have trouble processing language? Or, is it more a matter of effectively expressing his or her thoughts? It could also be a fluency challenge, such as stuttering. While therapy targeting each of these challenges is expressly goal-oriented, the approach a therapist would take is different. In addition, the expectations for the course of therapy is different, depending on the nature of the challenge. For example, in some cases, a child who stutters may always, to a certain degree, stutter, even though the frequency and severity of stuttering may dramatically improve. In addition, addressing a language processing challenge may be as much about learning and using strategies to compensate for that innate challenge than on “being cured” of that challenge. Therapy then may be more of a longer-term process. However, with expressive language and/or speech clarity challenges, we very often talk of, for lack of a better term, “cure.” Parents should adjust their expectations for therapy accordingly.