Boost Your Child's Speech Progress

I love that speech therapy is an easily accessible resource for many children in schools and through early intervention programs. I was a school-based speech-language pathologist for eight years!

Seeing this work from both sides has made me realize that sometimes, private speech therapy in addition to, or in lieu of, is an excellent idea for supercharging your child’s communication development. We will discuss school speech therapy vs. private therapy and five reasons you may consider these extra services to support your child best.

Five Reasons Private Speech Therapy May Be a Smart Investment for Your Child in Addition to School-Based Speech Therapy

Expertise

School-based SLPs are wonderful resources for most children. Suppose your child has a unique need, such as a feeding disorder, orofacial myofunctional disorder, cluttering, or selective mutism. In that case, you may want the additional support of a provider with more in-depth expertise in your child’s particular disability.

School-based SLPs do their best with the resources they’re given but might have ten different disorders on their caseload. 

If you, as a parent, can support your child by connecting your private SLP specialist with your public school SLP for them to collaborate on the best possible treatment plan for your child, you’re going to see great progress toward your child’s goals.

Dosage Differences

In the school setting, clinicians often do not have control over their caseload size, and unfortunately, it can be big! 

It’s not uncommon for SLPs in California to have caseloads of 55 children. School-based SLPs also work off the least restrictive environment (LRE) model for providing services. This means that services must be provided in the environment that is the least restrictive for the child.

The continuum of LRE is usually general education classroom -> small group pull-out therapy -> 1:1 therapy. In practice, most children receive treatment in a group setting.

Private practice therapy sessions are often 1:1. Instead of splitting 30 or 60 minutes with 3 or 4 other children, they get 100% of the attention of the SLP.

School-based clinicians must also balance therapy with missing their general education class time. With private treatment, you can choose a time that doesn’t interfere with your child’s regular education.

Fit

Just like you can’t choose your child’s teacher in public school, you can’t choose their SLP. Sometimes a child and SLP aren’t a good fit.

Private speech therapy means you have 100% control over selecting the best-fitting provider for your child. A child who is motivated by connection with their SLP is a child who is going to make more progress.

A Resource For You

Speech and language development is critical, and as a parent, you likely want to build up the tools in your toolbox for supporting your child.

With private speech therapy, you can participate in sessions and have more frequent check-ins and conversations with your private therapist than with your public school SLP.

A private SLP can be a great partner to bounce ideas off of in a more timely manner than what a school-based SLP can reasonably offer, given their large caseload. I will say this isn’t the case for ALL school-based SLPs but it is something I have noticed.

Convenience

Private speech therapy can be far more convenient than school-based speech therapy in the early years. Most often, preschool speech therapy programs are only offered at a specific school site, so you will likely have to drive somewhere that is not your home school. You also may be offered a session time that doesn’t work for your family, and there is no flexibility in changing it. 

With private speech therapy, you can choose your SLP, when, and where your child receives therapy.

At Little Language Lab, we pride ourselves on being a therapy practice of convenience. We make it easy to schedule and receive services. Please reach out if you are interested in private speech therapy!