AAC at Home: A Family's First Week

The device comes home on Friday. By Monday, most families have made the same loving mistake: turning every interaction into a quiz. “Show me WANT! Where’s MORE? Push COOKIE!” The child, sensibly, walks away.

Here’s the first-week script we coach families through.

Model, don’t test

Use the board yourself, out loud, during real moments: press EAT while saying “time to eat!”, press GO as the car starts. You’re not teaching button locations — you’re showing that this is how everyone can talk. Research on aided language stimulation is consistent: children learn AAC the way they learn speech, by seeing fluent users model it hundreds of times, with zero pressure to perform.

Honor every attempt — even the “wrong” ones

If they press BALL and there’s no ball, respond to it: “Ball! You’re thinking about your ball? It’s in your room!” A responded-to message teaches my words make things happen. A corrected message teaches this thing gets me in trouble.

The device is their voice, not a reward

Don’t take the talker away for misbehavior, and don’t lock it up “so it stays nice.” We don’t tape a speaking child’s mouth for the afternoon. Keep it charged, keep it reachable, bring it in the car.

Keep week one small

One or two routines — snack and bath, say — beat every waking hour. Ten genuine models in a real moment outweigh a hundred drills at the kitchen table.

If your SLP uses SLP UnMute, your child’s exact therapy boards are already on your phone — same buttons, same recorded voices, and your practice counts flow back to the therapist automatically. Ask about a family invite code.

Week one goal: not accuracy. Just this — the child sees the board as a voice, and the family sees it as normal.