Parents as tutorial participants

Abstract

The language therapy approach described in this article evolved out of the desperate need for remedial help for children who had been diag nosed as having some degree of specific language disability, but for whom adequate time with a trained therapist was not available. In general, it has been thought that "parents cannot, satisfactorily, teach their own children." On the contrary, there have been a few therapists who have been successful in using parents as assistants in planned programs. The needs suggested an experiment in parent-child-therapist collaboration, which is reported here. The subjects chosen were seven elementary school boys and one parent of each child. As an alternative to the traditional three to five tutorial hours per week, each parent and child had a single, joint one-hour lesson per week with their professional therapist. Initially, only the father was chosen as the parent "helper." However, two fathers in the study were unable to be consistent in their attendance, hence, the mothers of these two children attended, instead of the fathers. While the parents sat quietly observing, the therapist taught the child, using, essentially, the Orton-Gillingham procedures. The parent was instructed to practice the same approach at home for no more than fifteen minutes each evening, doing just what the therapist had done. In order for the parent to produce and reinforce the correct "sound/symbol" relationship of the alphabet, a portable tape re corder was used for recording the sounds to he imitated and practiced at home. The tape recorder was also used to dictate quickly the elements of the lessons covered in class, but which needed practice at home, such as spelling generalizations and rules. Parents were also encouraged to tele phone the therapist when they were in doubt. Each child was retested on his twenty-first lesson to ascertain the growth in reading and spelling. The average score of three reading tests was used: the Wide Range Achievement Test, the Gray Oral Reading Paragraphs Test, the IOTA Word Lists. In spelling, the Wide Range Achievement Test list was used. The bar graphs (Fig. 1 and 2) depict each child in terms of his earlier and later achievements.