What types of therapy do I provide?
I provide a variety of Speech and Language therapy services. Including; Articulation and Fluency Disorders and Delays, Expressive Language Delays and Disorders, Receptive Language Delays and Disorders, Pragmatic Language Delays (the social aspects of language), and Reading Delays.
I have a Master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology and have been providing speech and language services in the public school system and privately since 2002. I have provided therapy to children with expressive and receptive language delays, children with speech delays, children with Autism, children with Developmental Delays, and children with Reading Delays.
Expressive and Receptive
Language
Receptive Language refers to how well you understand language. Expressive Language refers to how you use words to express yourself. A Receptive Language Delay is demonstrated when your child struggles to understand and process messages they hear from others. An Expressive Language Delay is demonstrated when your child struggles to get their meaning, information, or message across to others effectively. A child with an Expressive or Receptive Language Delay will most likely struggle in school.
Articulation and Fluency
Articulation refers to how you produce your speech sounds. If you child is having difficulty being understood when speaking he or she may be experiencing an Articulation delay.
Fluency refers to the continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort of how you speak. Fluency is the fluid or flowing way speech should sound. A child with a fluency disorder may repeat syllables in words, repeat words, repeat phases, get stuck on words, may have visible signs of struggle, and their speech may have fillers like "umm" and "uh".
Pragmatic (Social)
Language
Pragmatic Language is how language is used in social situations. It is knowing what to say, how to say it, and when to say it, It is the social language we use daily to interact with others, the ability to use language for different purposes; to greet, to inform, to command, and to request. A Pragmatic Language Delay is demonstrated when your child has the inability to take turns in games and conversations, the inability to engage in the give and take of conversation, the inability to get their wants and needs met, is not understanding non-verbal language and meaning, has weak critical thinking skills, has difficulty with problem solving in a variety of settings. In school your child may have trouble following classroom rules and procedures, they may have difficulty understanding other people's perspectives, they may get in arguments with peers, they may interrupt the teacher and peers and speak out when not called on.
Reading Delays
A Reading Delay happens when you are not reading on the same competency level as others the same age as you. Reading is an amazing skill that is acquired through many areas of the brain working together. It takes phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, working memory, comprehension, and critical thinking to decode and interpret text. There are several known factors that may impact reading development; A history of Speech Delays, hearing a language other than English before school age, a history of frequent ear infections, a history of Receptive and/or Expressive Language Delays, or a family history or a diagnosis of Dyslexia. If your child is demonstrating delays in reading a systematic, structured approach to reading intervention will improve their reading skills.