Speech Therapy for 5 Year Old at Home | Tips from a Speech Therapist

0:00 - 1:07 Introduction
1:08 - 2:23 Is Your Child a Speech or Language Case?
2:24 - 3:41 If s/he is a speech case then…
3:44 - 4:54 What language level is your child?
5:05 - 7:32 Non-verbal children
7:54 - 9:45 Single-word level
10:06 - 12:22 2-3 word level
12:29 - 13:54 Verbal reasoning
14:22 - 16:49 Storytelling
17:06 - 20:14 Social training

Is Your Child a Speech or Language Case?
It’s important to know whether your child has a problem with saying speech sounds correct or has a problem using language. It might be that your child has a problem with both. And knowing this will help you decide how much therapy you need and it’ll also make communicating with your therapist a lot easier.

If s/he is a speech case then…
See a therapist, because the reason for a speech problem determines what approach a therapist would use for your child. In general, there are 2 types of speech disorders -  Organic or Functional. 

What language level is your child?
It’s important to know where your child’s language level stands. Because it directly affects what you should teach. Let’s say that your child can speak in sentences but only says it when s/he needs something from you. Your primary goal is to create more activities that your child can enjoy with you so there will be more opportunities to practice his/her language.

Non-verbal
If your child is non-verbal at 5 years old, there can be many reasons why this is the case. Usually, it is a mixture of speech AND language disorders. You should continue to tempt and entice your child to communicate with you. Whilst the way of communicating might not be using speech, it can be sign language, PECS (picture exchange communication systems), or even AAC (augmentative alternative communication). 

Also, you would need your child under instructional command to imitate speech in order to diagnose his/her speech ability. If your child doesn’t imitate you yet, that is the first thing you should be working on aside from teaching other ways to communicate with you. 

Single-word level
At this stage, you should be expanding your child’s vocabulary as much as possible. Children start to combine words when they reach a certain number of words in their vocabulary bank. We need words from different word classes e.g. verb, adjectives, and prepositions to form sentences. 

2-3 word level
This is where your child is using simple sentences to describe things that s/he sees. At speech therapy, we usually would concentrate on teaching longer sentences and answering questions such as “who” and “where”. So that they know how to flexibly change words inside of a phrase or sentence. 

Verbal Reasoning
When children start to speak in full sentences, the next step is to get them to use their language to explain something to us. This is where we start to ask simple “why” questions and describe things in a sequence. It might be teaching you how to play with a simple toy, answering why something happened.

Story Telling
Most speech therapy in the 5-6 year range is all about storytelling. Why? Because it works on a lot of things. You can introduce new words in a story with the correct context, it’s academically appropriate to learn with stories, and most importantly of all, it teaches a child to express something from start to finish with the guidance of pictures. There are also important skills to be learned such as being able to describe the appropriate amount of information (time, place, characters involved, motivation, problems, and solutions). These skills can then be generalized towards other facets of your child’s academics or speech coherence (ability to explain something).

Social training
Maybe your child is on the autism spectrum and his/her language isn’t bad at all, just that s/he cannot say the appropriate things at the appropriate time. Then your child should get therapy for social interactions. It might start off as 1-on-1 and later go towards a group setting to help your child generalize the new social rules taught to him/her. It’s important to know that you should ask for outside help because there’s only so much you can do at home with your child. S/he will need other people to generalize.

[zainabrose]

Thanks for this video. My child is 5 years old, but has delayed speech. She speaks some words clearly, but not full sentences.

[hennypenny]

My 7 yr old daughter is very good in academics but she has a problem with language. But we are on speech therapy for 5 months now. Slow improvement but still an improvement. I'm glad I found this video.

[rh]

My 4 year old talks a ton, but has a lot of articulation errors. Everyone in our house understands her, but people outside of our house sometimes don't understand all of her words. She doesn't have receptive communication issues at all. She understands what you're saying to her and always responds, but it's not always clear speech.

[MusafirsSoul]

My 5yr grandson seems to have functional speech issue. He talks a lot, long perfect sentences. I grasp main words in his sentences and then understand the gist. His mom dad, understand him, his sibling too. But rest of us infrequent visitors don't.

[cynthiad]

My son is gonna be 5 year old soon but has problem with social skills and language. He talks to us at home but not around other kids . But he loves to play with them . The problem is he doesn’t talk to them .

[Belen-lklo]

Thanks for ur advice but his mum was talking with son but he’s ignoring his mum only

[teptalk]

My son was diagnosed with mild autism July of last year. We have been endorsed for speech therapy (by our occupational therapist). He goes to a neurotypical school and although he can more or less cope, it is hard for everyone around him since he does not converse like other kids. I really would like to equip myself with methods on how to help him while looking for an ST. I am also worried since the pedia told me the golden years to learn speech is only until 5 years old - which is 3 months from now.

[kharmabutler]

This was very informative. Thank you. I love your cat as well. Lol

[Birabiro]

I watched your other vid thanks it was awesome advice 🙏 this one is as well

[JO-fihj]

My son has both and I have requested to speak to his speech therapist and we are in October and still I haven’t heard from her. I want to remove his school

[jaderoque]

My son is 4yo, he can sing but cannot communicate with us.

[itsgoodforthesoul]

Hi My Son Is 4 Years Old And He Can Have A Conversation With You However You Will Only Understand Him By Putting Together Clues From A Few Words He May Say. He Can Independently Read 40+ Sight Words Clear But When It Comes To Speaking A Sentence It Does Not Make Out. Are You Able To Give Me Feedback From What I've Giving You?

[nasteexoaa]

My daughter is 5 years old she is nonverbal and I have hard time making her say words, sometimes I feel to just give up trying

[julievillegas]

My daughter is 5years old and does not speak full sentence and sometimes i dont understand her and i feel like some times she doesn't understand me either 😢 weak muscle core and motor

[aicfy]

Hi. My son is autistic. He started speaking many words meaningfully like Cow, Dog, etc. but when I ask him what's this he never answers. This is happening from 3 the last 3-4 months. Can you please tell us what should we do? We are from India and we already don't listen to his gesture requests.

[QuarcooLillian]

My son is 5 years he can read and write he can talk but he can't communicate

[Jeenaisikanaamhaii......]

My 4 yr daughter is repeating wantever i am saying but not saying anything from her side...

[miaadam]

Thanks for the info. My child prefers to play alone unless I get a new toy then he would want to play with me. He does however give me more attention with table time activites. Do you have any videos on activites that don’t involve toys?

[LoveOwusuaa]

Sir my son is 5 years when you sing he will back you but he can sing on his own please help me

[revathisagireddi]

Hi sir my son 6 years old. He speaking the so many rheym, storys but not clear sound how can over come his problem