Speech Therapy at SST
What is Speech/Language Therapy?
Speech therapists work with children with a variety of delays and disorders from mild articulation delays to more complex disorders such as autism, Down syndrome, oral-motor delays, feeding difficulties, hearing impairment, motor speech disorders, and other developmental delays.
Speech Language Pathologists are highly trained specialists that assist your child with speech, talking, communication, and oral motor skills for feeding. The field of Speech Language Pathology is very broad as SLPs are trained in a many areas that can assist your child to become successful in school, play, and socially.
Areas addressed by Speech Language Therapy:
Articulation Disorders
Articulation is the ability to produce phonemes or speech sounds. Articulation skills are acquired developmentally, and certain phonemes or speech sounds are acquired at different ages. Some articulation errors may be developmentally appropriate due to a child not yet reaching the age of the development of a certain speech sound.
An articulation delay or disorder might be present if a child is not accurately producing speech sounds that he or she should be able to produce developmentally. An articulation disorder might also be present if there are a combination or pattern of speech sound errors that make a child’s overall speech and communication hard to understand.
The term “articulation disorder” or “speech sound disorder” is an umbrella term that refers to any combination of difficulties with the production of speech sounds that can include but are not limited to:
Articulation norms are listed below. These ages indicate when speech sounds are typically developed, but development can vary from child to child. Please note that a child should be able to produce the listed sounds by the end of the year indicated. For example, a child should typically be able to produce the /l/ sound at the end of age 5 before turning 6. These articulation norms were determined using the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation, Second Edition (GFTA-2).
Articulation Norms
When to Consider an Evaluation for your Child:
Swallowing Disorders/Feeding
Information will be added soon...
Fluency Disorders
Fluency refers to displaying characteristics of stuttering such as whole word, part word repetitions, phrase and sentence repetitions, sound prolongations and repetitions as well as secondary characteristic of stuttering which may entail blinking, head nods and facial twitches.
Voice Disorders
Voice disorders are often associated with physiological factors such as lesions in the vocal folds. Voice disorders can be characterized with inappropriate intonation, rate and prosody for ones age and gender.
All of the above disorders can be co-morbid with a variety of diagnosis. Some diagnosis often displaying the above disorders include, but are not limited to: apraxia, auditory processing disorder, autism, social communication disorder, down syndrome, ADHD, aphasia, cleft palate, dysarthria, developmental delay, traumatic brain injury, and dysarthria.
Social skills refer to a child’s ability to interact with other people. There are many different skills that fall under the umbrella of social skills, including understanding social rules, using correct body language, using appropriate language, and using empathy to understand the world from someone else’s point of view. Many children that demonstrate language delays also have difficulty with social interaction.
Early Social Skills: Responding To Others
One of the first social skills that Speech Language Pathologist begin working on with children with social communication delays is helping them respond to others. SLPs begin therapy at this level by helping a child learn to respond to sounds that someone else makes or by helping them respond to their name when it is spoken. Responding to others is an extremely important skill for children to master as it is the very basis for social interaction.
Emerging Social Skills: Preschoolers
The next step in developing social skills is relating to other children. Once a child enters preschool they will need to be working on relating to other children in order to develop mastery of social skills. Preschoolers must learn the rules of social interactions in order to have successful interactions and relationships with other children. During preschool years children learn how to deal with conflicts that may arise during interactions with other children and how to initiate and maintain interactions and friendships. Through Social Skills therapy they can learn the skills that are becoming challenging to them.
Social Skills for Adolescents:
Social skills can be addressed at all ages. Our Speech Language Pathologist will set up programs for all ages based on each child’s own specific needs. Activities for adolescents are tailored to them. They are practiced with their therapist and then practiced with friends and family.
Language
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association defines language as “the comprehension and/or use of a spoke (i.e., listening and speaking), written (i.e., reading and writing), and/or other communication symbol system (e.g., American Sign Language).”
There are three primary classifications of language: receptive (i.e., listening and reading), expressive (i.e., speaking and writing), and pragmatic (i.e., appropriate use and application of language for communicative and social situations).
There are five domains of language which apply to receptive, expressive, and pragmatic language abilities. These domains include phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Below are brief descriptions of each domain.
Phonology is the study of the phoneme or speech sound system of a language. It includes rules for both combining and using phonemes accurately.
Morphology is the study of the rules that govern how we use morphemes, which are considered to be the most minimal meaningful units of a language, within a language.
Syntax includes the rules that pertain to the different ways in which we combine words to form sentences within a language. Syntax is a synonym for grammar.
Semantics include the meaning of words and the meaning derived when words are combined within a language.
Pragmatics include the rules associated with how we use language in conversation and in various social situations.
The term “language disorder” indicates the presence of an impairment in either the comprehension or the use of a spoken, written, or another communication symbol system (e.g., American Sign Language). In some cases, there is an impairment of both the comprehension and the use of a language. The language disorder may be related to the form of language (phonology, morphology, syntax), the content of language (semantics), and/or the function of language in social communication (pragmatics).
Language disorders may be related to difficulties in the following three areas:
To determine whether or not you should consider a language evaluation for your child, please click on the different areas of language (i.e., Receptive Language, Expressive Language, Pragmatic Language) to learn about typical language development and what your child should be doing at his or her age.
Expressive Language
Expressive language is the ability to clearly express thoughts, feelings, wants and needs, and ideas. Expressive language skills are acquired developmentally, and certain abilities are acquired at different ages.
What Should My Child Be Able To Do?
Receptive Language
Receptive language is the ability to clearly understand communication and what is being said by another person. Receptive language skills are acquired developmentally, and certain abilities are acquired at different ages.
What Should My Child Be Able To Do?
Auditory Processing
Auditory processing disorder (APD) is often described as greater than expected difficulty hearing and understanding speech even though no measurable hearing loss exists. Individuals with auditory processing disorders may act as though a hearing loss is present when in fact, hearing sensitivity is often within normal limits. APD is often confused with other disorders such as ADHD, language impairment, learning disabilities, social and emotional delays or cognitive deficits. It is important to take a multidisciplinary approach for accurate diagnosis of this disorder. Members of the team may include the speech-language pathologist, psychologist, classroom teacher, physician, parent and an audiologist.
Per the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)
Social Skills