LSL Up! Meet the Members of Your LSL Team

During the listening and spoken language (LSL) journey you, your child, your family members, and other caregivers will work closely with early intervention and hearing health professionals to reach the listening and talking goals you have for your child. But in the beginning of your LSL journey, you may be introduced to new terms and names for the types of professionals you and your child will meet. 

There may be many questions running through your head: 

• What does that professional do? 
• Do we need that kind of professional? 
• When would I need them? 
• How is this professional different from that other one? 

Those are completely natural questions to ask! And you’ll need to know the answers to those questions because you’ll be forming long-lasting partnerships with those professionals as you build your support team. The best partnerships form when the partners understand and trust each other. We know that better results happen when families and professionals work well together, which requires commitment from everyone working with your child, including yourself. 

Here’s what you can do to be the best partner you can be: start by empowering yourself with a working knowledge of each professional and the role they play. Just think of yourself as the head coach of your child’s LSL team, and think of the professionals like players you want to add. Get to know each one to understand what they do, when you need them, and the best way to work with them. 

Like any team, the key to winning is working well together. To make this easy, we created a handout with quick reference “team cards” for each of the main professionals you and your child will encounter. Learn more about the professionals you may encounter like, the pediatric audiologist, pediatrician, early interventionist, speech-language pathologist, early childhood educator, ENT/otologist, and teacher of the deaf (TOD). 

Your first priority is to seek the services of professionals who have the LSL knowledge and skills to effectively guide and coach you and your child.  

It’s essential to find professionals that support you as your child’s first teacher and respect the decisions you’ve made for your child and family. The most effective parent-professional partnership is one that can support and guide you through your LSL journey, collaborates as a team to provide family-centered care, and continually raises expectations for you and your child to achieve your listening and spoken language goals.