I like to have parents in the room for therapy. For cases when this is not possible, I leave time at the end of each session to go over what we did in therapy. Parents are always aware of our targets. I never send home a target word for home practice unless it is a successful word in therapy/in the treatment room, given no to minimal cues. I teach parents exactly how I cue- what I say exactly or what gesture or mouth posture I use. I explain to parents what to listen for - in other words, what the child is saying or doing wrong. For many kids who are initially starting therapy, parents and I collaborate to come up with a core vocabulary book. I tell parents what their child's best production/approximation is and make sure they understand the expectation. I explain how expectations change as the child's productions improve and how our specific cueing strategies change and fade over time.

For more established patients, I have a large inventory of documents containing a single picture, 10-12 times on a page. I tell parents to practice just the one target on the page- for example a picture of a "home" in order to get repeated trials. If there is a target word mastered in the therapy at random practice, I tell parents to ask them a question to elicit the target word as a response, at home, in the car, on a walk, or at the store, at random. I teach parents how to read to their child with CAS. I teach them simplify the text rather than reading all the words in order to practice just 1, maybe 2 targets at a time initially. I ask parents to provide me with a list of 10 words that are high frequency and motivating to the child. I often present this as listing their child's favorite things. This information provides me with possible targets that I compare to the child's sound inventory and word shapes. From a combination of these 2 things, I am able to come up with stimulus words.