Caregivers Are Becoming Very Adept in Speech and Language

After doing 40 years of doing speech therapy, I am finding that caregivers are becoming very adept in speech and language stimulation, as long as they have good resource material or training.

Case in point.

I have been working with a gentleman who has Broca’s aphasia and they will be leaving Houston shortly and moving to a different state. For the last few months I have been mentoring his wife in the methods of The Teaching of Talking method and she has actually become, surprisingly good.  And I have said it before; as good as many speech pathologists who are in the field stimulating language.  The difference between what she is doing with her husband, and other caregivers who are learning the Teaching of Talking method, is they are NOT doing traditional speech therapy that in many cases does not work.

Her husband loves coming to therapy because we talk.  We don’t do flash cards (old school), hand outs from an aphasia book (old school) and repeating single word vocabulary of a lot of stuff that is not pertinent to everyday living.  We talk about where they are going for dinner, what he is going to order, the party over the weekend where so and so got drunk, and there was lots of great barbeque!  We talked about his old friends who were there, and how he knew each of them.  We talked about his son whose old girlfriend stopped by, and his college-aged sons’ summer job.  We talked about their upcoming move, and where they will be going, and the challenges that will occur.  He laughed about “chilling out all day Sunday,” and what he watched on t.v.  We talked about how much his speech has been improving and what his friends had said about his speaking improvement.  We talked about so many different things!

And you know what the most remarkable thing was?  I was just observing; his wife was doing all of the speech and language stimulation.  (I would make an occasional comment here and there to his wife who was conducting the session and showing me how she could stimulate her husbands’ speech and language anytime, anyplace and anywhere!)

“Remarkable, I thought….She looks and sounds like an elegant speech language pathologist.”  (and man!  She sure could get that guy talking!”

But you know something?  She was just his wife…..a special education teacher, who decided months ago after being told by a therapist that her husband was terminated from speech therapy since he was not making progress and had reached a “plateau.”   She knew her husband could make progress, but was not willing to give up on him like the therapist did.  She did her homework, and got another opinion.  She found out her husband is very stimulable and loves to talk about fun stuff.  The guy loves therapy, and it doesn’t matter if it’s me or his wife stimulating him.  We just know what to do and how to do it in a courteous, non-threatening way that makes perfect sense!

Does this situation resonate with you, reader?

Mark Ittleman, M.S. CCC/SLP


See the web site:
      The Teaching of Talking
and the Facebook in Mark Ittleman