Speech Therapy
Pediatric speech therapy helps children with reaching their full developmental potential by providing intensive, individual sessions to target a variety of disorders. We help children discover their true communicative skills to assist with finding their independence and help create better familial and social relationships.
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We provide early intervention services to those whose typical development and learning may be affected by developmental delays, disability, or health conditions. The earlier that therapeutic services can be implemented, the more likely children will develop appropriately and be prepared to achieve academic success.
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For more information regarding speech therapy, please visit the American Speech-Language- Hearing Association (ASHA) website at www.asha.org. ASHA is the national and professional organization for speech and language pathologists.
Speech Sound Disorders
A child may have difficulty with producing the correct sounds, which can affect how you understand their speech. Speech sound disorders include articulation disorders and phonological disorders. Articulation is an issue with producing certain sounds; whereas, phonological is where a pattern of sound errors occur.
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS):
This is a neurological speech sound disorder where the child has difficultly planning and coordinating speech motor movement. The child may exhibit groping jaw, tongue, and lip movements that inhibit them from imitating simple words.
Language Disorders
Language is how we connect with others and the world around us. If a child struggles with language development, they could exhibit delayed comprehension of new skills and ideas (receptive) as well as communicating their wants and needs others (expressive). These struggles can ultimately affect their growing social connections and academic success in the future.
Social Communication
Social communication is how we use our language skills in a variety of social settings. Struggles with social communication can lead to difficulties with a child’s ability to interact with their peers, participate in familiar and unfamiliar social settings, adapt to new social changes, and prepare them for academic success.
Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Individuals with severe speech and language delays may need a mode of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to assist with communicating in the world. By using a variety of supplemental techniques and tools (PECS and SGDs), those individuals can express their wants and needs as well as their thoughts, feelings, and ideas.
Cognition and Memory
If a child struggles with cognition and/or memory, their ability to learn, retain, and use new speech and language skills can be negatively affected.
Oral Motor Functioning
Oral motor functioning is how we assess the strength and movement of our oral structures: jaw, lip, tongue, cheeks, hard palate, and soft palate. Any interference with the normal development and function of these structures can negatively affect a child’s articulation, language, feeding, and/or swallowing.
Feeding and Swallowing Difficulties
Appropriate feeding and safe swallowing skills are pertinent to any child’s growth and development. Problems with either of these areas can lead to food and oral aversions, disruptive mealtime behaviors, choking, and/or malnutrition. Long-term consequences of feeding and swallowing disorders can ultimately affect a child’s weight gain and growth.
Fluency
Fluency refers to the smoothness, continuity, rate and effort of one’s conversational speech. Fluency disorders are indicated by either abrupt interruptions (stuttering) or rapid irregular speech rate (cluttering).
Voice
Voice refers to the quality, pitch, and loudness of one’s conversational speech.