Speech and Language Pathology
Speech therapy can help individuals learn to speak more clearly. This helps them feel more confident and less frustrated about speaking to others. Individuals who have language issues can benefit socially, emotionally and academically from speech therapy.
Our therapists can help treat issues regarding:
Receptive Language: Trouble understanding (receiving) language.
Expressive Language: Trouble speaking (expressing) language.
Pragmatic language: Trouble using language in appropriate ways.
Articulation: Not speaking clearly and making errors in sounds.
Myofunctional Disorders: Forceful protrusion of tongue during swallowing.
Fluency: Trouble with the flow of speech, such as stuttering.
Sensory Integration: Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of processing and coordinating sensory information.
Resonance or voice: Trouble with voice pitch, volume and quality.
Oral feeding: Difficulty with eating, swallowing, and drooling.
Our therapists use strategies tailored for each patient’s particular challenge. Strategies might include:
Language intervention activities: These activities build skills in a variety of ways, including modeling and giving feedback. The therapist might use pictures and books or play-based therapy. He/She may also use language drills to practice skills.
Articulation therapy: The therapist models the sounds the patient has difficulty with. This might include demonstrating how to move the tongue to create specific sounds. Some treatments may focus on increasing intra-oral awareness as well as stimulation and strengthening of the lips, tongue, soft palate and facial muscles to achieve a speech intelligibility and appropriate production of different sounds; in particular the sounds of /s/, /l/, /r/, /th/, /f/ in conversational speech.
Feeding and swallowing therapy: Our primary goal is to recognize the physiological underpinning of eating issues in patients in order to avoid a negative effect on their social and emotional development. The patient may have also difficulties with oral sensory awareness and/or oral tactile defensiveness, as well as organizational skills required for age appropriate feeding skills.