What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “speech therapy”? Many people think first of children who stutter or mispronounce words (like when “sister” becomes “thith-ter”), and may imagine that speech therapy involves hours and hours of word repetition until they get it “right” and graduate. But in truth, speech therapy is much more.…
Things I love about my profession include getting to hear a child’s first word, seeing the “light bulb moment” when a child has figured out how to do something that was really difficult for them, or being able to dismiss a child because they have mastered all goals (even though it makes me sad at the same time). These are…
There was a single moment when I “fell in love” with being a therapist. I was in college, working with my very first patient. He was two years old and had very few words. I had been given family pictures to work with, so along with other words, I worked diligently on teaching him to say “Daddy.” At the…
One of the most common questions I hear from parents is “How do I respond to my child that stutters?” Many parents worry that if they attract attention to their child’s stutter it may get worse. Let me put your mind at ease: stuttering is neurologically based and does not develop from an outside influence, so you…
Do you ever feel like there is a missing piece in your child’s language development, especially in the areas of reading and listening comprehension? Have you been unable to find the key to unlock the mystery of why he continues to experience difficulty despite therapy, extra help, and tutoring? If so, then keep reading –…
Several years ago, I attended a continuing education program to give me more insight into treating children with a very limited diet. It totally changed my perspective on treating the “picky eater”. The Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS) treatment method uses a systematic desensitization approach to address the feeding/eating skills of a child, and it takes the family into account, as well.…
If you have a young child, you almost certainly have seen developmental charts in books or on the internet – you may have even spent a great deal of time comparing their recommendations to your child’s abilities. These charts detail expected speech and language milestones, gross motor milestones, fine motor milestones, feeding milestones, and so many others to…
Has your dentist or orthodontist mentioned that your child or teen might have a “tongue thrust?” Has your child been in speech therapy for some time with little gains toward increasing ability to make new sounds/words or increase intelligibility of speech? Does your child produce a lot of speech sounds with their tongue too far…
First of all, take a deep breath. You are not alone! In fact, approximately five percent of all children have been noted to experience periods of stuttering and in the United States, over three million Americans stutter. Many well-known personalities such as Emily Blunt, John Stossel, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, and King George VI have all experienced stuttering in their…
Most people think of sign language as a method of communication for people who are deaf, but sign language for hearing children has become quite popular, especially among parents of children with special needs, such as Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and other conditions which are often accompanied by speech delay. Some parents are wary,…