Back to School: What Every Parent Should Know About School Speech Therapy
A new school year means new teachers, new routines, new schedules—and, for many children, a new speech-language pathologist.
If your child receives speech therapy at school, there are a few things you can do to help your child’s SLP understand them better and help yourself feel more prepared throughout the year.
You don’t need to know everything about special education. But you should know that you are an important part of your child’s team.
1. Respond when your child’s SLP reaches out—and tell them what you see at home
The beginning of the school year is incredibly busy. SLPs are reviewing IEPs, building schedules, meeting new students, talking with teachers, completing evaluations, and figuring out how services will fit into the school day.
So if your child’s SLP sends home a questionnaire, email, introduction, or request for information, respond when you can.
A file doesn’t always tell us what a parent knows.
You might know that:
Your child talks much more at home than at school.
People outside your family have difficulty understanding them.
They recently started saying a sound correctly.
They become frustrated when they can’t find the words they want.
They have difficulty telling you what happened during their day.
They communicate very differently when they are comfortable.
A strategy from a previous therapist worked especially well.
Something has changed since last school year.
Those details matter!
And don’t worry about using speech therapy terminology. You don’t need to know whether something is technically “expressive language,” “word retrieval,” “articulation,” or “pragmatics.”
You can simply say:
“My child knows what she wants to say but has trouble getting it out.”
“People outside our family have trouble understanding him.”
“She can answer questions but has a really hard time explaining what happened.”
“He gets upset when people ask him to repeat himself.”
Those observations are incredibly useful.
If your child has had an outside speech-language evaluation or receives private speech therapy, share that information too. As SLPs, being able to collaborate with another SLP helping your child can make a world of difference.
2. Ask speech therapy questions directly to the SLP
Your child’s teacher is an incredibly important part of the team.
Teachers spend hours with your child every day. They see how your child communicates in the classroom, interacts with peers, follows directions, participates in lessons, and handles the demands of the school day. That information is extremely valuable.
But your child’s teacher is not a speech-language pathologist.
Teachers are trained in education. Speech-language pathologists complete specialized graduate education and clinical training in communication and swallowing disorders. SLPs evaluate, diagnose, and treat speech, language, voice, fluency, cognitive-communication, and other communication disorders within their scope of practice.
Those are different professional roles. A teacher may be able to tell you:
“His speech is sometimes difficult for classmates to understand.”
The SLP can explain why, which sounds or speech patterns are involved, what is being targeted, and how your child is progressing.
A teacher might notice:
“She seems to have trouble following directions.”
The SLP may be looking at whether the difficulty involves receptive language, vocabulary, memory, the language within the direction, or something else entirely.
Your teacher may know your child’s speech goals, but they will not necessarily be able to explain evaluation results, diagnoses, treatment approaches, or clinical reasoning the way the SLP can.
That doesn’t diminish the teacher’s role. Teachers are often one of our greatest sources of information and an incredibly important part of helping skills carry over into the classroom.
But questions about speech and language therapy should be directed to the SLP.
I once had a teacher tell me that a student’s mom was concerned because he was repeating words and phrases so much. She wanted to know whether we could get him to stop repeating and talk without doing it.
With good intentions, the teacher told her, “Yes, we’ll work on that.”
The problem was that this child was using echolalia, and the teacher did not yet understand what echolalia was or that those repetitions were serving an important purpose for him.
It became a great opportunity to educate the teacher, but it was also a missed opportunity to help that parent understand what her child was doing and why. I reached out because I wanted to have that conversation with her directly, but sadly never heard back.
If something doesn’t make sense, ask the SLP. If you hear different information from different members of the team, bring everyone into the conversation.
The goal isn’t to go around your child’s teacher. It is to make sure the parent, teacher, and SLP are all on the same page.
3. School speech therapy and private speech therapy are not the same thing
This is an important distinction. School-based speech therapy is provided in the context of your child’s education.
The school team isn’t simply asking:
“Does this child have a speech or language disorder?”
They are also looking at:
“How is this affecting the child at school?”
Private speech therapy does not operate under the same educational eligibility requirements. A private SLP can look more broadly at how communication affects a child at home, with friends and family, in the community, and in everyday life.
That means a child can have a real communication disorder but not necessarily qualify for school-based speech therapy. It also means a child can receive school speech therapy and still benefit from private therapy. Neither is automatically better. They simply work within different systems.
When might my child need private therapy too?
Private therapy may be worth considering if:
Communication difficulties significantly affect life outside of school.
Your child would benefit from additional individual treatment or greater intensity.
Your child has a speech or language disorder but does not qualify for school services.
Your child has a complex communication disorder that may benefit from specialized expertise.
A difficulty is not substantially affecting school performance but is affecting everyday life.
Your child becomes frustrated, embarrassed, or avoids speaking because communication is difficult.
People outside the family frequently have trouble understanding your child.
Your child struggles to communicate with friends or participate in activities outside of school.
You would like more parent education, home strategies, or opportunities for practice in other environments.
Private therapy can also provide a different treatment format.
A school SLP may appropriately work with several students together, and practicing communication with peers can be valuable.
A private SLP may be able to provide consistent one-on-one treatment devoted entirely to your child’s needs. For some children, that additional intensity can help.
Does private therapy replace school therapy?
Usually, they should not be viewed as interchangeable.
A school SLP sees how communication affects your child in the educational environment. They can work directly with teachers, understand classroom demands, and help skills transfer into school.
A private SLP sees another version of your child and may have more flexibility to address communication across environments or provide additional treatment intensity.
Your child may have very different needs at school than they have at home or at boy scouts.
When possible, communication between the school and private SLP can be extremely helpful. They do not need identical goals, but understanding what each provider is addressing helps everyone support the child without creating confusion.
4. Know what is actually in your child’s IEP
You do not have to memorize your child’s IEP, but you should know the basics.
Take a few minutes to look at:
Current speech and language goals
What is your child actually working on?
Services
How frequently will speech-language services be provided? How long are the sessions? Are they individual, group, or a combination?
Accommodations or supports
Are there communication supports teachers or other staff should be using?
Progress reporting
How and when will you receive information about progress?
Then ask yourself:
Do these still sound like the right priorities for my child?
An IEP shouldn’t just be paperwork you see once a year and put away. It is also meant for you.
It is a big, overwhelming document. If you don’t understand something, ask. The professionals on your child’s team work with IEPs all the time, and they should want you to understand what is being recommended for your child.
5. Prepare for your IEP meeting
IEP meetings can involve a lot of people, paperwork, scores, goals, terminology, and information coming at you quickly.
You will be given an opportunity to share your thoughts, so write them down beforehand.
Bring a list of:
Your biggest concerns
Improvements you have noticed
Skills that are still difficult
Questions you want answered
Anything your child has said about school or speech therapy
Concerns you see at home that may not be obvious at school
What you would most like your child to do more independently
It is surprisingly easy to walk out of a meeting and suddenly remember the question you meant to ask.
During the meeting, ask questions. If someone says your child has difficulty with receptive language:
“What does that look like in the classroom?”
If you are shown a test score:
“Can you explain what that means in everyday terms?”
If a new goal is proposed:
“What will my child actually be doing when working on this goal?”
If you don’t understand why a service is being increased, reduced, changed, or discontinued:
Ask why.
You are not expected to speak special education jargon. You should understand what is being recommended for your child.
And remember: you are not sitting across the table from “the school team.” You are part of the team.
The professionals at the table know your child in their respective settings and areas of expertise.
You know your child when they are tired, excited, frustrated, with siblings, at a birthday party, ordering at a restaurant, or trying to tell you about something that happened hours ago.
That information matters. Your observations, concerns, questions, and priorities belong in the conversation.
6. What is a special education advocate?
A special education advocate is someone who helps parents understand and navigate the special education process.
An advocate may help you:
Review evaluations and educational records
Understand your child’s IEP
Prepare questions
Identify concerns you want discussed
Understand your rights
Attend an IEP meeting with you
Take notes or help you keep track of what was discussed
Bringing an advocate does not automatically mean you are preparing for a fight with the school.
Sometimes parents simply want another knowledgeable person in the room who can listen, take notes, and help them process a lot of information.
My biggest advice is to do your research when choosing an advocate.
Ask what types of students and situations they have worked with and how they think they can help your family specifically.
A good advocate should understand the roles of the different people on an educational team, help make your concerns clear, and support productive conversations centered around your child—not create unnecessary tension because they misunderstand those roles.
When might you consider an advocate?
You might consider additional support if:
You do not understand what the school is recommending.
You repeatedly leave meetings more confused than when you arrived.
You have concerns you do not feel are being addressed.
You and the school disagree about your child’s needs, evaluations, services, or placement.
Your child’s situation has become particularly complicated.
You have had several meetings without resolving the same concern.
You feel too overwhelmed to participate effectively on your own.
Sometimes simply consulting with an advocate before the meeting is enough. The purpose should be to help you understand the process and meaningfully participate in decisions about your child.
7. Don’t wait until the annual IEP meeting to communicate
If you have a question about speech therapy in October and your child’s annual IEP meeting isn’t until March, ask the question in October.
If your child suddenly begins struggling with something new, reach out.
If you don’t understand what your child is working on, ask the SLP.
If you are seeing exciting progress at home, share that too.
And if you are hearing one thing from the teacher, another from your child, and something different from the SLP, it may be time to get everyone together. Sometimes there are genuinely a lot of people trying to help one child who simply need a sit-down conversation to get on the same page.
Don’t be afraid to request one.
Start the year by building the relationship
Tell your child’s SLP who your child is. Tell them what they are good at. Tell them what frustrates them. Tell them what you have been working on and what you are worried about.
Talk to the teacher about what your child is doing in the classroom.
Talk to the SLP about speech, language, communication goals, evaluation results, and therapy.
And when something is unclear, ask.
You don’t need to become a speech-language pathologist or a special education expert to be an effective member of your child’s team. You already bring something no one else at that table can:
You know your child.
