Consolidation or Regression

I have been a speech and language therapist for 22 years and so many people have rung me and expressed their concern and panic about regression.

There are times when you feel as though your child is regressing and things are not going well, progress has stopped, things are not moving as they were previously, and things begin to feel a little bit tensed. A little bit worrying for you that things are not going the way you want them to. I have been a speech and language therapist for 22 years and so many people have rung me and expressed their concern and panic.

There are a few things about this we need to unpack. We talk a lot about the 5 Cs in my Bootcamp. One of the Cs is Consolidation. Consolidation is a time which can look like regression, it can look like plateauing. But it is actually a very important phase for the children to go through in order for them to lay down all those neurological connections. In order for them to bed everything in before the next bit of progress comes. If a child goes through that, don’t panic. It’s totally natural. There is something about panicking that impacts you as a parent. When you panic, something clicks inside you and you feel a big pressure to make things move again. You start looking for a new speech and language therapist, a new idea. You focus on the “doing”, and "What can I do now to make my child progress? Do more!".

Children don’t respond well to teaching when they are in their early communication stage. Teaching slows communication down. You might be thinking, of course, I have to teach my child. When we think about teaching, it is mostly asking them questions, telling lots of information doing lots of talking. What children need during this consolidation period is language facilitation. Language facilitation is about stepping back and being more hands-off. When we don’t allow that panic to take over, and do less, we let the children be and give them room to flourish. We start to see that progress starts again.

Doors to my Can-Do Bootcamp open again in September. Please click here to sign up for my waiting list.

Categories: regression