Essential Strategy Cards: Boosting Speech for Children With Hearing Loss

What Are the Essential Strategy Cards?

They are a set of 15 cards aimed at helping you practice therapeutic strategies at home. Each card outlines one key strategy to support listening and spoken language development, along with practical examples for incorporating the strategy into activities of daily listening. The cards are divided into three main themes:

• Getting Ready: Preparing your child and their environment for effective communication
• Listening: Encouraging active listening and developing your child’s listening skills
• Talking: Supporting your child’s language development and helping them communicate more

Let’s take a closer look at each theme.

Getting Ready

This category includes four effective strategies for getting your child ready to listen every day.

• Eyes Open, Ears On: Make sure your child’s hearing device is on and working whenever they’re awake. Consistent use is key for better language development. If they take it off, gently put it back on and keep a positive attitude.
• Come Close to Me: Hearing devices work best within a 3-meter range (about 10 feet). Staying close to your child helps them catch every word more clearly. Since background noise can interfere, it’s helpful if everyone around your child speaks clearly and is mindful of their speech.
• Reduce Background Noise: Listening can be tricky with background sounds. Try to keep the room as quiet as possible by reducing noise sources–turn off the TV, close windows, and add soft furnishings to hard surfaces. This allows your voice to stand out more.
• Same Thinking Place: Notice what your child is looking at or interested in and talk about it. By addressing your child’s actions or the objects they look at, you help them associate new vocabulary and syntax with things that are directly engaging and visually meaningful to them.

Listening

This category includes six different strategies to promote active listening and develop your child’s listening skills.

• Acoustic Highlighting: Make important sounds or words stand out by saying them with emphasis such as being louder or softer (intensity), longer or shorter (duration), in a higher or lower-pitched voice, or by pausing before the word. Whispering and using a sing-song voice can draw attention to words too.
• Talk, Talk, Talk: Speak about what you and your child see, do, and think to help them learn words and sentence structures as well as how to use them.
• Wait, Wait, Wait: After you ask a question or give a direction, give your child time to think and respond. Looking at your child expectantly signals to them that it’s their turn to speak. Be sure to wait long enough that it feels slightly uncomfortable, and then wait just a bit longer without making it a battle of wills.
• Auditory Hooks: Grab your child’s attention and help make the association between the sound and an object or action with words like Look!, Wow!, Uh-Oh!, Up, up, up.
• Listening First/Auditory Sandwich: Give your child information and instructions with spoken language only before you use gestures or visual cues to help them understand. Think of listening as both the starting and finishing points (the bread of the sandwich), with non-auditory cues as the filling.
• Say It Again: If your child doesn’t respond, it may be because they did not hear fully, did not understand, or missed part of what was said, so repeat what you said or say it again using different words.

Talking

This category includes five different strategies to support your child’s spoken language development and help them to communicate more.

• Auditory Closure: Start a familiar sentence, song, or rhyme and then stop, waiting for the child to recognize and fill in the key word(s).
• Sabotage: Set up situations where your child needs to use words to ask for help or solve a problem by accidentally-on-purpose making a mistake or mess or saying/doing something the opposite of what was expected.
• Expansion & Extension: Repeat what your child says, correcting grammar or adding new information. For example, if the child says, “red cup,” you can expand by saying, “Yes, the cup is red” and extend by adding, “The red cup is dirty.” An example of extension is responding to the child’s utterance of “red cup” with “Yes, that is the red cup, and we have lots of colors. This one is yellow.”
• Use Choices: Ask questions with choices so your child can practice making decisions and using spoken language to communicate. When playing, you could ask your child, “Do you want the ball or the block?” You thereby allow them to decide on their own and encourage them to communicate using words. However, if they point or gaze at one object, first provide them with the language. If none of the above applies, wait until your child vocalizes their wish. For children who have more sophisticated language, ask them, “What did you hear?” or “What do you think I said?”
• My Voice Matters: Show your child that their words matter. Show them that every sound or word they imitate or say spontaneously is important. This way you show your child the importance of their voice, encourage their vocalizations, and motivate them to use their voice. For example, your child might say “wa” for “water.” Praise their attempt. “Oh, you want water!”

Where Can I Get the Essential Strategy Cards?

Why Are These Cards Essential for Caregivers?

1. Always accessible: The cards are compact and travel-friendly, so you can take them wherever you go.
2. Practical: Each card describes a strategy briefly and provides a practical example of how to use it in your daily routines. This will help jog your memory about the recommendations your child’s rehabilitation specialist has made.
3. Understand and apply strategies: The concise descriptions make it easy to understand and remember the strategies so you can support your child at home.
4. Build confidence: The cards aim to promote your confidence in your ability to support your child as they navigate their hearing journey and reach their communication potential.

Your involvement is key to your child’s development, and with the Essential Strategy Cards, you’re equipped with the knowledge needed to turn everyday interactions with your child into meaningful learning opportunities.

Whether it’s preparing your child to listen, encouraging active listening, or supporting their language development, these strategies empower you to bridge the gap between therapy sessions and home practice.

By constantly practicing the strategies, you can help build your child’s confidence, strengthen their listening skills, and foster their ability to communicate.

Embrace these strategies with patience and positivity and watch as your child grows not only in their abilities but also in their self-esteem and curiosity about the world around them.