The speech therapy and language pathologists at Advanced Therapy Solutions provide services to help children communicate. Pediatric Speech-Language therapy consists of specialized intervention to allow children to gain appropriate communication skills in order to create valuable relationships in their lives.
Speech-language therapy addresses the way in which we communicate; however, speech and language are different! Speech involves the way that we say words which includes articulation, fluency, and voice. Language involves the words that we use and how we use them to communicate what we want and need. This includes what we understand, what we express, and how we socially interact with our friends and family.
Our speech therapy pathologists work closely with our occupational therapists to integrate a sensory-based approach to help children with SPD build the foundations needed to develop engagement and attention on which to build and expand communication skills.
Developing communication skills is one of the most important elements to socializing and creating valuable relationships. Our goal is to help children to become successful communicators and independent language learners by tailoring our programs specific to each child’s needs.
Language-Based Engagement and Interaction
Language-Based Engagement and Interaction describes the foundational skills for social communication. Engagement encompasses the ability to share rich experiences with others in order to communicate affect and emotion. Interaction begins through shared attention, gestural responses, and affective exchanges. These critical language skills are the building blocks for complex expressive language.
Receptive Language
Receptive Language describes the comprehension/understanding of language. Comprehension involves attention, listening, and processing the message to gain information. Areas of receptive language skills include: attention, receptive vocabulary, following directions, and understanding questions
Expressive Language
Expressive Language is a broad term that describes how a person communicates their wants and needs. It encompasses verbal and nonverbal communication skills and how an individual uses language. Expressive language skills include: facial expressions, gestures, intentionality, vocabulary, semantics (word/sentence meaning), morphology, syntax (grammar rules), and narrative/story telling development.
Language Therapy for Children with Autism:
Speech and Language therapy for children with Autism at Advanced Therapy Solutions is provided in collaboration with other therapies to help the child maximize their potential. Speech and Language therapy supports expressive, receptive, play, and cognitive communication needs. Some of the tools used by speech language therapists at Advanced Therapy Solutions include:
Auditory Processing Skills
In order to process language heard, one has to be able to attend, discriminate, remember and comprehend auditory information. Some children struggle with these skills even though their hearing is within normal limits. Difficulties in any of these areas would benefit from speech and language intervention to teach compensatory strategies, to improve auditory processing skills, and to facilitate memory.
Articulation and Phonological Delays
Articulation and Phonological delays relate to how clearly a speech sound is produced. Children or adults may have errors in speech for one specific sound, or a group of sound classes. For example, a child may say “tat” for “cat.” For children, when multiple speech sounds show a pattern, errors are classified as phonological disorders.
Childhood Apraxia of Speech
Childhood Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder that impacts a child’s speech clarity. Children with apraxia of speech have difficulty planning and producing refined movements of the jaw, lips, and tongue needed for clear speech. It is characterized by inconsistent sound production and difficulty planning and producing the precise, highly refined and specific series of movements of the tongue, lips, jaw and palate that are necessary for clear speech.
Dysarthria
Dysarthria is another motor speech disorder that results from neuro-motor impairment to the muscles of speech production. Often, people with dysarthria show muscle weakness and fatigue during a therapy session. Dysarthria is characterized by sound distortions, imprecise sound production, and other deficits in muscle tone, range, and speed of movement.
Social and Play Development
Good social skills are critical to successful functioning in life. These skills enable us to know what to say, how to make good choices, and how to behave in diverse situations. The extent to which children and adolescents possess good social and play skills can influence their academic performance, behavior, social and family relationships, and involvement in extracurricular activities. Speech pathologists can help children learn to use appropriate non-verbal and language skills in different social situations, and understand how thoughts, emotions and behaviors impact our social interactions with others.
Phonological Awareness and Pre-Literacy Skills
Phonological awareness is a person’s explicit knowledge of the sound segments (phonemes) which comprise words. Phonological processing skills include the ability to recognize and produce rhyming words, segmenting or breaking apart words into syllables/sounds, identify where a specific sound occurs in a word, and blend sounds into words. Problems in these areas can indicate later difficulties learning to read.
Mon-Fri: 9 am – 6:30 pm
Sat: 8 am – 1 pm
