Appointments may be scheduled by contacting our office. If an evaluation has been completed recently, we may not need to repeat it. Following a review of the evaluation to determine if speech therapy is indicated, and immediately prior to beginning speech therapy, your speech language pathologist will develop a treatment plan specific to the needs of the individual. All treatments are provided one-on-one with the same licensed therapist each session.
Comprehensive evaluation and treatment options for children are offered in the following areas:
Expressive Language
A child who has difficulties in the area of expressive language has trouble communicating verbally. They may have difficulty finding their words during conversation, have limited vocabulary usage, and/or have difficulty using correct grammar to produce longer, more meaningful sentences.
Receptive Language
A child who has difficulties in the area of receptive language has trouble understanding, attending to or processing spoken language. This can manifest in several different ways. They may have difficulty following directions, answering questions, and may appear to not be attending to spoken language.
Articulation
A child who has difficulty with articulation has trouble producing speech sounds. Sounds can be distorted, substituted, deleted, added or changed in their conversational speech. Errors in speech sound production can make it difficult for others to understand the child when they talk.
Phonology
A child who has difficulty in the area of phonology is demonstrating a specific error pattern in their speech sounds. For example, a common error pattern is called "fronting," in which all sounds that are made in the back of the mouth (such as "k" and "g") are substituted for sounds that are made in the front of the mouth (such as "t" and "d"). Instead of saying "cat," the child might say "tat."
Auditory Processing
A child who has difficulty in the area of auditory processing has trouble processing the information they hear because what they are hearing and what their brain is processing isn't the same. A child who has difficulty in this skill area will often not recognize subtle differences between sounds in words, even when those sounds are loud enough to be heard.
Apraxia of Speech
A child who demonstrates apraxia of speech has difficulty saying what they want to say correctly and consistently. They cannot coordinate between the level of the brain, where they think of the words they want to say, to the muscles of their mouth, which will form the words. This can make their speech very hard to understand.
Social Skills/Pragmatics
Children with difficulties in the area of pragmatics, or social skills, have difficulty using language socially in ways that are appropriate for a child their age. Social skills involves much more than just spoken language. It also involves eye contact, turn-taking, topic maintenance, and appropriate utterance length. Children who have difficulties in the area of pragmatics may have trouble making friends and/or engaging in appropriate play for their age.
Feeding
Children who have difficulties with feeding may have trouble coordinating their muscles to suck, chew and/or swallow, or may have aversions to certain textures of foods. Feeding therapy can involve oral-motor exercises, techniques and procedures. New textures may be introduced to the child depending upon the child's specific feeding needs.
Early Intervention/Language Delay
A child who is between the ages of birth to 36 months who is not demonstrating communicative skills typical for their age, such as the ability to babble or use single words, may be demonstrating a language delay. Children with this difficulty can sometimes be referred to as "late talkers." Early intervention allows for both identification of problem areas and early treatment of such areas in order to minimize any potential speech and/or language difficulties later on.