Planning for Services at Enrichment Therapy & Learning Center

By: Jaimi Bird, M.A., CCC- SLP

How long will my child need extra help?  Can you guarantee he will make progress?  Why are services at Enrichment Therapy and Learning Center better than somewhere else?

These are questions we often hear from parents, and each are valid.  After all, we understand that as you are beginning the process of enrolling your child in services at Enrichment Therapy and Learning Center it is a time of uncertainty.  You have recognized that your child is having difficulty learning or that he or she is delayed in speech and language development.  You have made the decision to invest in your child’s future by making the commitment to participate in one of our programs.   We know that when you make that commitment you want some sort of guarantee that you will see results.   

We CAN say that every child will make progress while participating in our programs!   At ETLC, we are different from other tutoring services because all of our learning specialists are certified teachers with classroom and individual teaching experience.  Read about the difference between learning specialists and tutors, here. Each of our speech-language pathologists holds their Certificate of Clinical Competence and has studied and trained in many research-based practices.  Our team prides ourselves in providing each child with a specific plan to best meet their individual needs.  We do not provide a cookie-cutter approach.  Following an evaluation, we will create a specific set of goals to help your child improve their skills.  We know that each child is unique and has a unique learning style.  We truly want each child to succeed!     

Every child WILL make progress, however, there are many factors that will impact their rate of progress and how long to expect their course of therapy or academic skill-building to be.   As said above, every child is unique!  We are not able to give you a number of days or number of sessions that it will take for him to reach his or her goals.  Some of the variables that impact a child’s rate of progress include:

• Number of sessions per week scheduled.  Following your child’s evaluation, we will make a recommendation for the number of individual sessions per week, or specific programs that we feel your child will gain the most benefit from.  At that point, we will work with you to create a schedule that fits your family’s needs.  Most often, the greater frequency of skill-building, the more improvement you will see in skills. 
• Home practice.  At ETLC, we feel that it is important for skill-building to carry over at home too.  A short time of daily practice will improve your child’s rate of progress.  Depending on your child’s age and ability, often 10-15 minutes of practice each day will make a difference!  Your child’s speech-language pathologist or learning specialist will provide you with home activities to be completed. See this for tips for practicing speech sounds at home.  Here are some tips for building language during play.  Check out these tips for working on math facts.  Our blog is full of great home activity ideas.  Check them all out!
• Motivation.  For older children, being motivated to make improvements is a huge predictor of the rate of progress.  If a child is motivated to improve, he will want to complete his home program and will work hard — the result will be meeting goals! 
• Complicating Factors.  Some children have a medical diagnosis that may impact their health and learning ability.  These are factors that are out of the control of the child, family, and clinicians but they do affect a child’s length of time needed for therapy or academic skill-building. 

There are many things that will play a role in determining how long your child will benefit from services at Enrichment Therapy and Learning Center.  We feel that a partnership with families that includes ongoing communication will help your child succeed!

Enrichment Therapy & Learning Center has locations in the Iowa City, IA area and Des Moines, IA area. We provide individual speech-language therapy and tutoring as well as offering small group academic programs.  At Enrichment Therapy & Learning Center our passion is to help kids achieve effective communication skills and gain academic success.  Contact us for more information on how we can help your child succeed.

info@enrichmenttherapies.com

740 Community Drive, Unit A

North Liberty, IA 52317

319-626-2553

 infodm@enrichmenttherapies.com

5530 West Pkwy, Suite 300

Johnston, IA 50131

515-419-4270