Clean-up in therapy sessions isn’t just about reducing distractions. The ESDM manual discusses the importance of clean-up as it relates to positively impacting speech, language and communication for the child. Parents can also be educated on the importance of cleaning-up, and the benefits of their children also cleaning up their messes at home should be emphasized.

Tips To Have Clean-Up Run Smoothly

If the child does not naturally begin to clean-up at the beginning therapy sessions, the therapist should quickly remove all toys from the child’s view (e.g. putting them into a bag) independently. The child can be informed that it’s clean-up time, but avoid having a power struggle. Over time, the child will begin to realize that clean-up is part of the routine. Clean-up can also be fun and made into a game where the toys are saying good-bye to the child or where the toys are being pretend-eaten by the bag.

Importance of Clean-Up:

Minimizes distractions to maximize the child’s attention.
Adds complexity. Clean-up targets sorting, matching, turn-taking, language, fine motor movement, classifying and shared roles. It can also target receptive language and linguistic concepts if the SLP makes comments such as, “Pass me the big green block please.” Instructions can also be targeted, for example, “First pass me the zebra, and then pass me the giraffe.”
Temporal sequencing and planning. Temporal sequences are targeted (e.g. “First we will clean up and then we will play jenga.”) This aids in children’s ability to imagine future events and to plan accordingly for those events to take place. Additionally, this helps the child hold off on their initial impulse to jump quickly to the next activity that has peaked their interest. Therefore, this also impacts working memory (an executive functioning skill) because the child has to remember that they have to clean-up before they can play a different game.
Stimulates language as self-regulation. The SLP will be accompanying clean-up with simple language (e.g. first this, then that) which the child will learn to later use as a way to help them self-regulate. They can internalize this language and utilize it when planning to say a transition.
Prepares children for expectations at home, preschool and kindergarten. Clean-up is a popular part of most transitions in early childhood and there are expectations that children can carry out a clean-up task with moderate independence. Therefore, these clean-up skills practiced in therapy will transfer to other environments in which these skills are expected.

Find the ESDM manual on amazon.ca or amazon.com and the parent guide on amazon.ca or amazon.com.

-S

Ps. If children struggle with the (first this, then that) use a visual schedule with pictures to aid in their comprehension.

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