Speech and Language Therapy

 

Achieving Effective Communication

Speech and Language Therapy provides children with the tools to become effective communicators.  The focus of treatment may be strengthening oral motor skills, motor planning difficulties , working on social interactions, understanding and expression of language, voice disorders, fluency disorders and processing difficulties. We formulate goals that are specific to each client and will work with other disciplines in order to provide the best treatment for the child. We then provide families with the tools to carryover techniques learned in therapy.

 

Feeding therapy is also an important aspect of Speech Pathology.

 

Speech Therapy can:

• Improve receptive and expressive language skills

• Focus on pragmatic language to improve social interactions  with peers and adults

• Work on articulation skills to improve intelligibility of speech

• Improve oral motor muscle tone and function through various exercises

• Focus on auditory processing skills

 

 

 

We also provide PROMPT therapy to aide in the remediation of oral motor sequencing difficulties. PROMPT stands for “Prompts for Restructuring Oral and Muscular Phonetic Targets.” It is used to restructure the speech production capabilities of children with a variety of speech disorders, including apraxia.

 

PROMPT utilizes specific techniques based on touch pressure, proprioceptive (the body’s sense of itself) and kinesthetic (tactile) cues to help reshape the way the brain and mouth work together to articulate words. This is a very hands-on approach which will require the involvement of a speech language pathologist to administer treatments.

For example, one PROMPT technique involves manipulating the external muscles of the face to help the child understand the movement required to produce a specific sound. Because each individual’s needs are different, the types of techniques will vary. The PROMPT technique often is not used by itself to treat apraxia, but is used in conjunction with other tools.

 

 

The SMART Palate is computer based program allowing the child and therapist to see the positioning of the lips , tongue and jaw on a computer screen in real time. This allows us to give the child immediate feedback in order to correct speech production in a more condensed time frame. 

 

www.completespeech.com