Where is the Instruction Manual? Support for the Child with Delayed Communication
My dad is visiting us this week. He’s an engineer and can fix almost anything. He’s pretty brilliant. And he reads instruction manuals.
Unlike most of us who would never keep the manual for the bread machine, the guide for the TV remote, or the operating instructions for the blender, my Dad keeps and refers to these instruction manuals regularly. Yes, you can find them on the internet. No, my dad will never throw them away.
When approached with a request to fix something or operate an appliance, he almost always asks, “Did you read the manual?”
As annoyed as I often am at this line of questioning, I get it. When you have a problem or frustration with an appliance, it makes sense to want to go to the index and flip to the page that will tell you the solution.
Similarly, I often wish that parenthood came with a manual. I wish I could look up a fail-safe method to help my preschooler navigate frustrations of life in a pandemic or help the teething baby sleep. I really wish I could locate the “off button” for screaming and weird sound effects.
Even more so, when your child has a delay or special needs, there is no manual. There’s no step-by-step, fail-safe guide on exactly how to help your specific child. If you are walking this road, you know that. But you don’t have to do it alone.
As a parent and a therapist, I deeply value a combination of expertise and compassionate, relationship-centered care. Yes, my fellow speech language pathologists and I have shelves full of textbooks. We read research articles every month. We do “read the manuals” on articulation disorders, language delays, and how children develop communication skills. But that’s not enough.
When my dad is fixing something, he doesn’t simply read the manual like a recipe. More like a good cookbook, he uses it to understand the principles of how and why things work the way they do. He uses the manual as a starting point and then branches out, thinking critically and trying different approaches until he finds what works.
It goes without saying that children, with their unique brains and personalities, are too complex to be summed up in a manual or textbook.
In the world of speech therapy, there is an art that must accompany the science. The art of listening. The art of forging a partnership with families. The art of observing to understand, building on a child’s strengths, and crafting a plan for each individual child to make communicating easier in daily life.
Our “book knowledge” is important. The textbook, like the manual, provides a starting point. But it’s only when we add clinical experience, a relationship-based approach, and a genuine love for the kids and families we serve, that we can create lasting, meaningful progress.
