No Therapy Dog? No Problem. Animal-Related Engagement in Pediatric Speech and Language Therapy
Have you ever stumbled upon a helpful tool or technique to use with your speech therapy clients but had no idea what it was called? Or been surprised that something you’ve intuitively been doing actually has a name and research behind it? If you’re already using therapy materials with animal characters and themes, then you’ll probably be pleased to know you’re already incorporating Animal-Related Engagement, or ARE.
A client with autism considers the next possible location to place a toy dog during an animal-related engagement speech therapy activity about prepositional phrases.
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Why Animal-Related Engagement?
Most children are naturally drawn to images and tales of animals. Throughout history, many cultures have used stories about animals as analogies to explain human nature and teach new skills.
There is a theory, biophilia, that humans are innately drawn to the natural world and benefit physically and mentally from regular exposure to flora and fauna.
In modern life, though, many children have limited access to the outdoors and a variety of animals. Choosing therapy materials that incorporate nature and animals may help improve a child’s ability to:
sustain attention,
engage meaningfully, and
remember a therapy activity
While I love partnering with my speech therapy dogs, I realize many SLPs won’t have regular access to a suitable canine co-therapist but may still want to share their love of animals with the children they serve.
Even if you do incorporate a live therapy dog, they need a lot of down-time and can’t be present 100% of the time. Animal-Related Engagement allows you to capitalize on some of the benefits of using animals without the added complications of a live animal.
What does Animal-Related Engagement look like in practice?
While targeting a communication goal, Animal-Related Engagement might include:
· Using books that feature animal characters
· Playing card or board games that use animal tokens
· Virtual visits, prerecorded videos, or photographs of animals
ARE activities may stand alone, such as reading “Bark, George” with a client practicing the /r/ sounds after more traditional drill practice or looking at “Good Dog, Carl” to elicit verbs after completing an actions card deck.
ARE activities can be combined into themes. When working on “Is…? questions, I may read “Where’s Spot?” by Eric Hill with it’s repeating refrain of “Is he under the ___?”, then re-enact the book with a stuffed animal Spot toy, and finally follow up with a simple memory game using the dog cards from K-9 Capers to elicit “Is it this one?”
(For links to these and other favorite Animal-Related Engagement materials, click here.)
Some of my personal favorite books and games for Animal-Related Engagement to use instead of or in addition to a live speech therapy dog.
ARE can incorporate the child’s own pets or stuffed animals. Some children can be motivated to practice a skill to use with their own animal at home. For example, a child a child working on the /s/ sound could practice telling a stuffed animal to “sit”, then with a caregiver’s help try it with their own dog at home to generalize the skill to a new environment.
Animal-Related Engagement can also be combined with animal-assisted interventions with a speech therapy dog, such as reading “The Napping House” by Audrey Wood to the therapy dog as he or she lies nearby or playing “Diggin’ Doggies” (Game Zone) on a team with the dog.
One of the most common ways I incorporate my therapy dogs is the “turn and tell”—asking a child to practice a targeted sound, word, or phrase and then repeat it one more time to show the therapy dog, eliciting extra practice.
How to choose Animal-Related Engagement materials
When choosing a book or game for a child, always start by defining the targeted goal: what behavior do you hope to elicit?
For books, do you have an animal-themed title in your collection that is simple and repetitive enough to provide a lot of opportunities to practice the target? Check out the Animal-Related Engagement Resources page for a curated collection of useful titles.
For games, are the rules simple enough to keep the focus on the sound or sentence structure? Many games can be simplified (e.g., I use most card decks to play Go Fish or Memory, regardless of the rules that come with them and with some board games I skip the competition aspect and simply work with the child to accumulate the tokens or make it across the finish line).
Some games include components that can be re-purposed for imaginative play without the added complication of structured turn-taking and sequencing. By reducing the cognitive load, or how many different skills are being used at one time, it will allow the child to focus on the specific skill you’ve chosen to target that day.
I hope you’ll be inspired to find new ways to use Animal-Related Engagement in your speech and language therapy. Many detailed animal-assisted speech therapy activities, with both a live therapy dog and for animal-related engagement, are included in Paws for Progress: Integrating Animal-Assisted Interventions Into Your Speech-Language Pathology Practice coming from ASHA Press in fall of ‘24.
In the meantime, follow on Instagram @Speech_Dogs and check the other resources on the Speech Dogs website.
May your days be filled with puppy wiggles and children’s giggles,
Sharlet
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