How to Increase Parent and Teacher Involvement

Involving caregivers and teachers in the therapeutic process is a major component of successful therapy. However, social, familial, personal, and environmental factors can make caregiver and teacher involvement difficult. In this course we identify the benefits of family involvement and will then provide five research-based strategies for how to improve our interactions with families and teachers. We refer to the strategies as SMILE (Sign, Model, Imitate, Label, and Expand). These strategies have been found to improve communication skills in young children. We will define the SMILE strategies, provide the rationale behind them, and demonstrate how to implement the strategies when serving an early-childhood population.