Feeding Therapy
Our clinic offers feeding evaluations and therapy for families seeking support and coaching regarding their child’s feeding. Our clinicians use feeding therapy to help:
- Reduce picky eating and food refusal
- Overcome food aversion and fear at mealtimes
- Identify and treat oral-motor, oral-sensory, avoidant/restrictive, and medically-based feeding difficulties
- Transition safely from tube to oral feeding
- Transition safely from liquid/purees to solid foods
- Increase acceptance of new foods and textures
- Develop a positive relationship with food
- Provide parents with strategies and techniques to help reduce stress at mealtimes and encourage food/liquid intake
Motor Speech
Children who have difficulties controlling and/or coordinating the muscles needed to produce speech sounds often sound as though they have articulation errors. With motor speech, these speech sound errors are not due to articulation, but stem from difficulties with motor movement.
Social Communication
Social communication is the way in which we use language in social situations. Some indicators that your child may have difficulty in this area of communication are as follows:
– Difficulty understanding non-literal language
– Difficulty using language for different purposes e.g. greeting, requesting, commenting, informing
– Difficulty interacting with their peers
– Trouble with flexible thinking
– Difficulty understanding the unspoken “rules” of conversation
– Difficulty adapting language to the listener or situation
Language
There are two parts of language that children may have difficutlies with. The first, receptive language, is our understanding of language. The second part is expressive language, which is how we communicate a message to others.
Below is a guide to help you know if your child may need help with their language:
Early Language: signs of delayed language include children having less than 200 words in their vocabulary by age two, using mainly single words, difficulty expressing their wants/needs to others, having trouble following directions and/or trouble understanding what you are asking them.
School age language: signs of delayed language in older children include trouble sequencing events, difficulties answering questions, using immature grammer for their age, and difficulty expressing their wants/needs to others
Literacy
Literacy
Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write. This skill can come easily for some individuals, however, in many instances, there is a need for more in-depth training so that the child can acquire the skills that are essential to reading and writing.
Using the Orton-Gillingham Approach, our clinicians target literacy in a direct, explicit, multisensory, and structured approach to address the different areas of literacy such as:
– Phonological Awareness : The ability to separate and manipulate the sounds in spoken language at the word, syllable, and sentence level.
– Phonics and Word Recognition : Teaching children letter-sound associations, morphology, and strategies for reading irregular words.
– Fluency : The ability to read quickly while being able to access the meaning of what is being read
-Written Expression: The mechanics and conventions of writing, composition, and semantics.
Phonology and Articulation
Articulation is the production of speech sounds. Phonology is the pattern of these sounds in language. Articulation errors occur when there is difficulty producing certain sounds or combinations of sounds. For example, a child may be able to produce the “s” sound in the word soap, but not the “s” sound in the word mess.
Phonological processes describe error patterns or speech simplification that occur in your child’s speech. For example, saying “tat” or “ca” for the word cat. Many of these phonological patterns are present in children’s speech who are under the age of three, but as your child gets older, less of these errors should be present.
Some examples of errors that may indicate your child needs help with phonology are as follows:
– Initial consonant deletion e.g. saying “at” for the word cat
– Backing e.g. saying “tup” for the word cup
– Fronting (for children over the age of 3) e.g. saying “doh” for the word go
– Reduplication (for children over the age of 30 months) e.g. saying “baba” for the word bottle
Parent Coaching
Parents are a critical part of intervention for speech and language therapy. Whether it be the clinician showing you how to practice a specific speech sound at home, or using early language strategies at home with your child, parents are strongly encouraged to be involved in sessions.