How Speech Therapy Works?

How Speech Therapy Works

SLPs ( Speech-Language Pathologist) figure out what kind of language problem a child or adult has. They determine what’s causing it and decide on the best treatment. SLPs may help kids build skills by working with them one-on-one, in small groups, or in the classroom.

If your child has trouble reading and spelling, speech therapy may not seem like the obvious answer. Many people think that speech therapists only work with people who have trouble making certain sounds (articulation) or who have stutters or lisps.

Speech therapists do handle those speech issues. But they also help kids with other kinds of problems with spoken and written language, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and auditory processing disorder. In fact, a speech therapist is more accurately called a speech-language pathologist.

Different Focuses:

SLP can help with -

• Articulation problems: Not speaking clearly and making errors in sounds.
• Fluency problems: Trouble with the flow of speech, such as stuttering.
• Resonance or voice problems: Trouble with voice pitch, volume and quality.
• Oral feeding problems: Difficulty with eating, swallowing and drooling.

SLP can help treat - 

• Receptive language problems: Trouble understanding (receiving) language.
• Expressive language problems: Trouble speaking (expressing) language.
• Pragmatic language problems: Trouble using language in socially appropriate ways.

SLPs use strategies tailored for each child’s particular challenge. Strategies might include:

• Language intervention activities: These activities build skills in a variety of ways, including modeling and giving kids feedback. The therapist might use pictures and books or play-based therapy. She may also use language drills to practice skills.
• Articulation therapy: The SLP models the sounds the child has difficulty with. This might include demonstrating how to move the tongue to create specific sounds.
• Feeding and swallowing therapy: The SLP teaches the child exercises to strengthen the muscles of the mouth. This might include facial massage and various tongue, lip and jaw exercises. She might also use different food textures to encourage awareness during eating and swallowing.

The Benefits of Speech Therapy

Speech therapy can help kids learn to speak more clearly. This helps them feel more confident and less frustrated about speaking to others. Kids who have language issues can benefit socially, emotionally and academically from speech therapy.

For kids with reading issues such as dyslexia, speech therapy can help them hear and distinguish specific sounds in words: the word bat breaks down into b, a, and t sounds. This can improve reading comprehension skills and encourage kids to read.

Speech therapy is especially beneficial when kids begin early in life. In one study, 70 percent of preschool kids with language issues who went through speech therapy showed improvement in language skills.

Results You Can Expect From Speech Therapy

Your child’s work with a speech therapist may last for months or even for a few years. It depends on your child’s needs. You will probably see improvement in your child’s issues. Remember, though, that therapy can’t “cure” your child. The underlying speech or language issue will still be there.

The therapist should give you and your child strategies to deal with obstacles more effectively. She will likely give you activities to practice at home to reinforce the skills your child is learning. Kids who make the most progress tend to be those whose get involved in their treatment.

It’s important that the speech therapist and your child are a good match. The speech therapist should have experience working with kids with your child’s specific issue. Speech therapy is just one way to help a child with learning issues related to language and speech.

Key Takeaways

• Speech therapy isn’t a quick fix. It takes hard work over many months or even years.

• It’s helpful if the speech therapist has experience working with kids with your child’s issue.

• Your involvement—like practicing exercises at home—can make speech therapy more effective.

Sources: https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/treatments-approaches/therapies/what-you-need-to-know-about-speech-therapy?gclid=Cj0KCQiAkNfSBRCSARIsAL-u3X-m2ENYuDwF_WTWFVQPTG9ovENZRQlrmYfQ6xC7kwg-AU4V-QNRgswaAmLOEALw_wcB

Dyslexia Awareness Month

Dyslexia Awareness Month

Dyslexia is defined as difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and poor spelling and decoding abilities. Typically, Dyslexia results from a deficit in the phonological component of language. 

Dyslexia Awareness month was first celebrated in 2002. 

You can help raise awareness by using the hashtag #DyslexiaAwarenessMonth on social media! 

Resources:

• http://nild.org/october-is-national-dyslexia-month-do-you-know-the-signs/

International Stuttering Awareness Day

International Stuttering Awareness Day

International Stuttering Awareness Day is Oct. 22nd. To help raise awareness and celebrate here are some fun facts and myths about stuttering:

• Over three million Americans stutter
• Children who stutter are at a higher risk for bullying
• Stuttering affects three to four times as many males as females
• Approximately 5% of all children go through a period of stuttering that last six months or more. 3 quarters will recover by late childhood, leaving 1% with a long term stutter.
• Studies show that people who stutter are as intelligent and well-adjusted as those who don't. 
• Nervousness does NOT cause stuttering
• Famous people who stutter include Emily Blunt, Joe Biden, and Marilyn Monroe

Your response when conversing with a person who stutters is important. It is not an appropriate response to tell them to "think about what you say first" or to "take a deep breath before talking." It is also not favorable to finish their sentences. A more appropriate response would be to listen patiently and treat them as you normally would treat someone in a conversation.  

Our very own speech language pathologist, Tiffani, has written a wonderful article regarding her journey with stuttering and her own fluency disorder. Check it out here! 

International Augmentative & Alternative Communication Awareness Month

October is the International AAC Awareness month!

PrAACticialAAC.org has many resources to help raise awareness of AAC and resources for those who have devices. 

This site also has a printable file flip chart called "Everyone Deserves a Voice" AAC Strategies for Success. 

Here is a blurb from the pamphlet: 

Students who use AAC need their communication systems within arms reach at all times. If you can see the student, you should also be able to see their AAC. Its never okay to turn it off or take it away. For students to learn to use AAC, they need to see adults & peers using it, too. Immerse them in an environment that is rich in AAC use throughout the day. Point to the AAC symbols as you speak. Use the AAC devise or app OR make a non-electoronic mock-up. 

We have a laminated version of this flip chart in our lobby at all times. 

However, during this month we will have multiple on the desk for you to take home and share with friends and family! 

Screen Time

As technology continues to grow, there is a common concern of language development in young children who spend ample amount of time on tablets. 

A study from the University of Toronto found that every 30 minutes of daily screen usage increases a child's risk of developing speech and language delays by 49% for ages 6 months to 2 years. They specifically found that there were difficulties with expressive language. However, the author cautions that their study does show a direct correlation between device use and language difficulties but there needs to be more research completed in order to signify the correlation. 

So how much screen time should you allow your child to have?
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time at all for children younger than 18 months. Children learn language by exposure, and birth to 2 or 3 year range is a time of massive advances in language development. 

Of course, Alternative Augmentative Communication (AAC) is an exception as it is vital in the development of language for non-verbal users. 

10 Benefits of Building Blocks

Did you know the benefits of development when it comes to building with blocks or legos?

1. Problem Solving 

Problem solving is beneficial in block building as it requires the builder to think about how to make this block structure stand on it's on. Problem solving on how to place the pieces to benefit the structure. 

2. Imagination

Imagination comes into play when the builder decides what to build. Sometimes it is thought of beforehand and sometimes the structure just comes together as they problem solve. They get to follow their own plan or work together as a team to create the structure they envision. 

3. Self-Expression

When children get to express themselves through art no matter if they are drawing, dancing, or building they are expressing their thoughts and in turn themselves. 

4. Mathematics

Carefully calculating the number of blocks on each side or tall is vital in the building process. You must calculate out the blocks in order to create a sturdy structure. 

5. Continuity & Permanence

Building block engages spatial awareness and mobile abilities. It can be in the sense of parallel play or working together as a group. 

6. Creativity 

Along with self-expression, children get to be creative on what they build. They use their imaginations to come up with a concept and problem solve to make it come to life!

7. Science

This activity is an opportunity to test hypotheses and build scientific reasoning through play and imagination. 

8. Self-Esteem

Children discover that they have ideas and that they can bring their ideas to life by creating, transforming, demolishing, and re-creating something unique. 

9. Social and Emotional Growth

Blocks help children learn to take turns and share, develop friendships, become self-reliant, increases attention span, follow directions, and develop confidence in their abilities. 

10. Fine Motor Skills

Using your fingers to manipulate different size and textures of blocks helps in the development of fine motor skills. 

Ear Infections in Children

Ear Infections are common in infants and children. In some cases, it can affect hearing and sometimes language development. 

         Two out of three children get at least one middle ear-infection (optitis media) by the age of 3. 1 out of 3 of these children will experience at least 3 infections. 50% of children have at least one ear infection by their first birthday. Unfortunately, the earlier the child gets their first one, the more susceptible they are to recurrent episodes. 

         Recurrent and middle ear fluid infections may experience mild to moderate hearing loss, which can affect the speech/hearing learning process. When fluid builds up in the ear, it can cause temporary hearing loss. 

         Children ages 2 to 4 have shorter, more horizontal eustachian tubes than adults that let bacteria and viruses find their way to the middle ear more easily. A common cold of flu can also lead to ear infections. 

Learn how to detect, treat, and prevent ear infections here!

7 Tips for Talking with Your Child

Most children who stutter benefit from taking time to speak at a rate that promotes fluency. Here are a few tips on how you can help your child's fluency when speaking to them. 

1. Reduce the Pace - Speak with your child in a unhurried way, pausing frequently.

2. Full Listening - Increase the times that you give your child your undivided attention.

3. Asking Questions - Try to resist asking one question after another. Sometimes it's best to just comment on what your child has said and wait. 

4. Turn Taking - Take turns listening and talking. Children find it much easier to speak when there are fewer interruptions.

5. Building Confidence  - Use descriptive praise to build confidence.

6. Special Times - Set aside a few minutes at a regular time each day to give your child your undivided attention

7. Normal Rules Apply

9 Tips for Communicating Better With People With Autism

Asha.org recently just put out a new infographic regarding tips to help improve communication for those with Autism. 

It's a must read for everyone! 

F.A.S.T

American Stroke Month

American Stroke Month started at the beginning of May. If you or someone you know is having a stroke, it is critical to get medical attention immediately! Immediate treatment may minimize the long-term effects of a stroke and even prevent death.

Recognizing the symptoms when someone is having a stroke is vital in order to get the most immediate medical attention. Here are the most common symptoms of someone experiencing a stroke:

    1. Face Drooping —> Ask the person to smile. Is one side of the lower than the other?

    2. Arm Weakness —> Ask the person to lift both arms. Is one arm drifting downward?

    3. Speech Difficulty —> Is their speech slurred? Ask them to repeat a simple sentence

    4. Time to call 9-1-1 —> Time is important! Tell them “I think this is a stroke”

Follow this link to learn more in support of the American Stroke Month!

Decision Making Opportunities for those with a Communication Disorder

Making little choices is an important daily function. We make decisions about what to wear, what to eat, and what to do daily. Imagine if someone else was making these decisions for you. Would you be happy with their decision? Despite the insignificance of these decisions, not making these decisions yourself can be demoralizing and limiting. 

It’s important to recognize how this may affect those with a communication disorder. Helping them to express their needs and wants through giving options could dilute a potential frustrating situation for them. While they may not know how to respond to open ended questions, giving choices can help them give an appropriate answer while practicing recall. For example, “Would you like to eat a banana or an orange?” instead of "What would you like to eat?"

Giving them the option to make these decisions gives them a sense of independence and empowerment. This also demonstrates that you respect their desires and needs.

Benefits of giving choices:

• Allowing children to make decisions demonstrates the role communication plays in making requests in a concrete, immediate way. For example, “Would you like to tie your shoes or would you like me to do it for you?”

• Giving them choices creates opportunities to model and expand language.

• Offering choices helps to set expectations when giving directions. Phrasing a command as two choices can give you a quicker response while helping the child to feel independent and as if it was their idea. For Example, “Would you like to put your socks or shirt on first?” This questions has an underlying command saying “It’s time to get ready.”

Also, it can help to make the child feel in control of their environment. Giving two choices can help them to maintain predictability and reduce the uncertainty of their environment.

How To Use Picture Books to Build Language Skills

For those not familiar with it, Brightly is a fantastic website for parents who want to foster a love of books and reading in their kids.  They have book recommendations, tips for parents, activity ideas, etc.

I especially love their section on picture books.  What I wanted to share today in particular is their article on ways to use picture books to build kids' language skills:

5 Ways to Use Picture Books to Build Kids’ Language Skills

The article is even written by a parent who is also a speech-language pathologist!  She describes how to build vocabulary, social language skills, comprehension, and sequencing abilities while sharing picture books with your child.  Enjoy!

--Sarah

Asking the right questions

We all ask children questions whether they be your own or in my case, a child I work with.  My goal is to increase language as much as possible and the best way to do that is to ask WH- questions, such as who, what, when, where, and why.  "What is that?" can generate much more language than, "Is that a flower"?  One of my earliest moments of clarity during my education was learning how to stop asking yes/no questions and to start asking WH- questions.  Super Duper Publications has a handout that is an excellent resource to learn more about asking WH- questions, see the link below.  Whether you are in the car, at the store, or playing outside asking questions that start with who, what, when, where, and why will help to create many more opportunities for language than yes or no.  

WH questions-Super Duper Publications

-Cassee

Spring Language Activity

A great way to work on increasing your child’s language is to do a hands-on activity together. As the weather gets warmer a fun activity to do together is planting in the garden! Whether you decide on a flower, fruit, or vegetable you can incorporate some language skills.

Skills you can target:

Increase vocabulary:

Examples of vocabulary words: soil, water, sun, shovel, seed, grow, plant, dig, etc. Don’t forget to include nouns and verbs!

Sequencing:

Talk about all the steps that took place and in what order.

Describing:

Talk about all the colors, smells, and textures you encounter.

Don’t forget to have fun!

-Kirsten

Fun Speech and Language Activities for the Car!

Are you planning a road trip during Spring Break?  Does is seem like you spend hours in the car every week driving kids to school, sports, appointments, etc.?  Here are some fun activities for the car with special speech and language twists:

• I Spy - A classic passing-the-time game.  Try mixing it up by spying categories of items, objects that start with a specific sound, or items based on function
• Speech & Language Twist: If your child is working on pronouncing certain sounds, try looking for items with that sound in the beginning, middle, or end of the word.

• Scavenger Hunt - This will take some prep work before your trip.  Put together a list of things you might see along the way and have your child check them off as you go.
• Speech & Language Twist: Don't forget to add adjectives and verbs to your scavenger hunt.  For example, have your kids look for something shiny, flat, or round and someone who is eating, someone who is singing, and something that is flying.  

• License Plate Search - How many different states can you find?  Keep track with a checklist or printed map.  Count how many of each state you can spot and see which one has the most. 
• Speech & Language Twist: Discuss the license plate design and talk about why that picture or saying was chosen.

• Find the Alphabet  - Look for the letters of the alphabet, in order from A-Z, on signs, billboards, cars, or anything passing by.  Take turns being in charge of different letters or see who can find one first.
• Speech & Language Twist: Don't just look for the letters, look for words that start will the letter.  You might have to get creative to cover all the letters.  Can you spot a Quacking duck or a Zipping car?

What's your favorite road trip game? Share it with us in the comments section below!

~Kimberly

SLP Terms and Acronyms: Understanding Speech-Language Evaluation and Progress Reports

SLP Terms and Acronyms: 

Understanding Speech-Language Evaluation and Progress Reports

Evaluation and progress reports can be tough to understand if the terms used to describe speech, language, feeding, and social delays, disorders, and concerns are unfamiliar to the reader.  Here is a list of my most commonly used terms in these reports as a pediatric SLP to help you understand the nature of the pathology and its treatment. 

AAC: stands for Augmentative and Alternative Communication.  Candidates for AAC include non-verbal children and individuals, those with degenerative diseases, and for aiding or replacing spoken language.  AAC can be low-tech like communication boards and PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) or high-tech using a specialized device or program on an iPad.

Alveolar ridge: is the bumpy area of the hard palate behind the front teeth.  The alveolar ridge is often referenced in articulation therapy when teaching tongue tip placement for /d, l, n, s, t, z/.

Apraxia or CAS: Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder which occurs when the brain cannot coordinate the movements necessary to produce consistent articulation of speech sounds

Expressive language: using words (or AAC) to communicate needs, wants, ideas, and feelings.  This also refers to how well one is able to follow the rules of language (like including past tense endings on verbs, plurals, put words in order to make a complete sentence.)

Oral hypersensitivity: can occur when a child has difficulty tolerating, chewing, or swallowing certain textures, flavors, or temperatures.

Phoneme: means sound.  When you see slash marks around a letter (like /s/) it means I am talking about the phoneme /s/ sound (actually sounds like /ess/).   For example /th/ is really one phoneme, although it is two letters.

Phonological process:  is a pattern of errors that children produce to simplify language as they are learning.  Some patterns are typical (like reduplication which happens when a young child says “baba” for “bottle”) and then fade as a child’s speech develops.   When processes do not resolve on their own, intervention may be necessary to help the child catch up with peers. 

Receptive language: means understanding others and following directions

Speech: means verbal communication.   Articulation, voice, and fluency/stuttering therapy fall under this category.

SLP:  Speech-Language Pathologist, one who provides treatment intervention for a variety of speech, language, feeding/swallowing, voice, fluency, and social therapy.

Keep in mind that these are the terms that come up most often for me, this is not an exhaustive list.  There are countless others.  If you’re unsure or unfamiliar with any of these terms as they pertain to your child, I encourage you to ask what it means.  You’re welcome to leave your question in the comment area of this post if you’re unable or uncomfortable asking your SLP.

St. Patrick's Day and a birthday!

To start I want to wish Paige, one of our speech therapists, a very happy birthday tomorrow!  We all enjoy working with her and hope that she has a wonderful day.

I really enjoy how many events and activities that go on in our area and especially around holidays.  St. Patrick's day is coming up and there is no shortage of fun events to attend.  New activities and events are a great way to foster new language and build vocabulary.  Below is a great article detailing family events for the holiday.

Go Green: Your Guide to the Best St. Patrick's Day Events

To continue in the holiday festivities I will also post a cute craft that I found on Pinterest.  It has the potential for a lot of language opportunities!  Please see the link below the image.

Rainbow Binoculars

You could target practicing specific sounds as you make the craft or target language building by playing "I Spy" with the binoculars.  Either way many children love to look and search for things!

I hope everyone enjoys the holiday.

-Cassee