Services Offered
Evaluations and treatments of individuals of all ages. Working closely with each patient and their family to create a specially designed plan of care to meet their communication or swallowing goals. Striving to provide therapy in a warm and comfortable atmosphere with the ultimate goal is for each patient reaching their full potential.
Spelling to Communicate teaches individuals with motor challenges the purposeful motor skills necessary to point to letters to spell as an alternative means of communication (AAC). As motor skills improve through consistent practice, students progress from pointing to letters on letterboards to spell to typing on a keyboard. Accordingly, communication moves from concrete to abstract as motor skills progress.
The American Speech-Hearing and Language Association defines a language disorder as impaired comprehension and/or use of spoken, written and/or other symbol systems. The disorder may involve (1) the form of language (phonology, morphology, syntax), (2) the content of language (semantics), and/or (3) the function of language in communication (pragmatics) in any combination.
Simply put, a child with a receptive language disorder is when a child has trouble understanding words that they hear and read. A child with an expressive language disorder has trouble talking with others and expressing their thoughts, ideas, and feelings.
Language disorders can have many possible causes.
Speech sound disorders: articulation, phonological disorders, and apraxia, occur when a child has difficulty producing sounds correctly. This occurs when children substitute sounds, omit sounds, add sounds, or change sounds. This makes them difficult to understand to both familiar and unfamiliar listeners.
A fluency disorder is a speech disorder that is characterized by dysfluencies, or disruptions in the natural flow of speech. The most common type of fluency disorder is called stuttering. Children or adults who stutter often exhibit dysfluent speech characterized by repetitions (my, my, my, my), sound prolongations (wwwwwwwhat), blocks (think of holding a breath), and interjections (I um need to um go home) that often have a negative impact on the rate and flow rate of speech.
Disorders of the swallow, known as dysphagia, can occur as the result of numerous medical conditions. If you think about it, the same muscles you talk with are the same muscles that you swallow with, so it makes sense that a Speech Language Pathologist would work with patients with swallowing difficulties. Dysphagia is a swallowing disorder involving the oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus, or gastro-esophageal junction. Consequences of dysphagia include malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, compromised general health, chronic lung disease, choking, and even death.
Aphasia is a neurogenic language disorder occuring as the result of damage to the language centers of the brain.
Your brain has two halves. Language skills are in the left half of the brain in most people. Damage on that side of your brain may lead to language problems. Damage on the right side of your brain may cause other problems, like poor attention or memory. Aphasia may make it hard for you to understand, speak, read, or write. It does not make you less smart or cause problems with the way you think.