'What Do You Mean by That? What Should I Do? What Should We Practice at Home?' Parental Perspectives on Multilingual Communication and Collaboration in Speech and Language Therapy.
Sione Twilt, Karin Neijenhuis, Rick de Graaff and 1 others
Multilingual parents in Dutch speech therapy feel they have less to say than the therapist, often accept oversimplified explanations of their child's condition, and some mistake therapy for Dutch lessons.
They also report feeling empowered and grateful for the service.
Key findings
1Parents describe feeling subordinate and dependent on the SLT because of their limited Dutch, and many accept that they have less influence in therapy decisions as a result of being second-language learners.
2The child-centred, simplified language used in sessions means parents do not grasp the complexity of their child's condition (for example, suspected Developmental Language Disorder), and many parents describe speech and language therapy as additional Dutch lessons rather than treatment for a communication disorder.
3Parents express a strong desire to be active partners in their child's therapy, but limited Dutch proficiency constrains their actual participation in conversations, homework, and understanding instructions; at the same time, parents report gaining confidence in their own Dutch and feeling empowered through the process.
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What it does not show
Interviews were not conducted in the parents' first languages; seven were in Dutch, three in English, and two relied on an informal interpreter, so some parents may not have been able to express their full experience. The sample is small (12 parents) and drawn from a single Dutch context, so the findings describe one healthcare and education system and may not transfer to other settings. The Yucel block-building exercise, while useful for reducing verbal demands, was unfamiliar to parents and required considerable time and instruction; some parents struggled to focus on their own experience rather than the child-SLT interaction. Two interviews used informal interpreters (a family member or friend), which the authors acknowledge is not ideal for accurate translation, and the interpreting procedure could have been more explicitly structured. The first author is both an SLT and a parent, which the authors note adds a particular lens; while reflexivity was addressed through journaling, supervision, and team discussion, the researcher's dual role is a factor to keep in mind when reading the themes.
Declared interests
No external funding was received. The authors declare no financial or personal interests that could affect their objectivity. The funder named is Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the parents' expressions of gratitude and empowerment as evidence that the SLT service is working well for multilingual families. In the same interviews, these parents describe feeling subordinate, accepting oversimplified explanations of their child's condition, and in some cases not understanding what the therapy is actually for. The empowerment and the equity gap coexist in the same parent, and the positive theme does not cancel the structural problems the paper documents.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →