Speech therapist

Following as I'm paying £75 an hour to a speech therapist who's doing exactly the same

@Shweta Thanks Shweta.. I wasn't too sure

What do you mean by make a few noises? Speech therapists tend to do a lot of talking. When my son was in early intervention I was like …she’s just coming here and playing with my son, throwing a ball, reading a book, naming things. But that’s what they do. Talk to the child. It helps. My son ended up talking a year later and then with continued speech therapy he has improved his pronunciation of words as well as conversational skills. And my son is now 5 and had an autism diagnosis from a developmental pediatrician when he was 2.5 y.o

I would recommend watching some videos on YouTube with speech therapy tips for parents. It's hard for us to say for sure without seeing it and knowing your child's age but, generally, speech therapy does involve playing with toys and potentially her stressing "noises." If your LO is very young and the concern is getting him/her to say any words, "noises" like animal noises or exclamations like "uh oh!" and "oh no!", as well as sounds like "beep-beep," "muah," "yum," etc. count as "words."

The speech therapist my daughter had used to play games. Some of it is understanding like put the doll on the bed. She also had sounds like oo-oi for example as she needed to sound words together. I also had to take photos of everything beginning with b and she would work on the b sound. Or break up words by clapping or doing animal sounds to exercise the muscles in her mouth. When she started “balk” was “milk”. Maybe ask her if she’s got any worksheets you can do at home. It’s worked for my daughter as she was preverbal when she started school.

Speech therapy focuses on the building of communication. Which can start through parallel play or making sounds noises etc. If you have concerns ask the therapist. Depending on what type of speech delay your kid has, it should work fine. My daughter has a mixed receptive/expressive speech delay and playing with the child or the toys also allows them to feel comfortable and works on imitation which can lead to imitation of speech and speech patterns.

In the beginning, it’s a lot of noises (animal noises, car noises) as these are the first things children “speak” before actual words. Mainly, the speech therapist is teaching you, the parent, how to interact with your child when they’re not there. Be mindful of what they’re doing with the toys when they’re saying it/ how often (there’s several techniques) and apply it to those same activities when they’re not there, plus other activities you do with your child. Speech therapists are hardly around, comparative to all the hours in the week you are and your child won’t make improvements if you don’t do the things they’re doing when they’re not there. You can always take some minutes at the end of each session to discuss your thoughts/ ask any questions and they’ll give loads of insight.