Articulation Disorder
Articulation disorders are difficulties producing sounds correctly, impacting speech intelligibility.
These disorders can range from mild to severe, affecting social interactions, learning, and self-confidence.
Causes of Articulation Disorders:
- Genetics. Family history of speech sound disorders can increase the risk.
- Hearing Loss. Difficulty hearing sounds can impact a child's ability to produce them correctly.
- Oral-Motor issues: Problems with the muscles involved in speech can lead to difficulties.
- Brain Injury or Neurological Conditions. These can disrupt the neural pathways responsible for speech production.
Common Types of Articulation Disorders
Substitution- Replacing one sound with another (e.g., "w" for "r").
Omission-Leaving out a sound altogether (e.g., "at" for "cat").
Distortion- Producing a sound incorrectly, but not replacing it (e.g., a lisp).
- Addition: Adding an extra sound within a word (e.g., "doguh" for "dog").
Childhood Apraxia of Speech
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder that affects a child's ability to plan and produce the movements necessary for speech. This condition makes it difficult for children to send the correct signals from their brain to their mouth, resulting in significant speech challenges.
Knowing the signs of CAS can help you understand your child's speech difficulties better. Here are some common characteristics:
- Consonant and Vowel Distortions: Sounds may come out unclear or altered.
- Distorted Sound Substitutions: Your child might use the wrong sounds in words.
- Inconsistent Error Type: The errors in speech are frequent and inconsistent making speech patterns difficult to predict.
- Issues with Pitch, Rate, and Rhythm Children may struggle with the timing of speech, leading to a robotic or unnatural speech pattern.
Approaches to Treating Speech Sound Disorders
Our therapists use a structured approach to help children with articulation disorders. This includes:
- Visual Cues: Showing how to make the correct sounds
- Verbal Instructions: Clearly explaining what to do with their speech muscles
- Tactile Reinforcement: Using touch to guide proper movement
By combining these techniques, we aim to improve your child’s speech clarity and confidence
Therapist will be happy to share carry over strategies so more practice can happen at home.
Treatment Approaches
- Articulation therapy emphasizes the precise placement and movement of articulators to produce specific sounds.
- Phonological therapy addresses the child's overall sound system, teaching the rules and patterns for sound production.
- Private therapy provides individualized sessions, offering personalized attention and consistent practice, which often leads to faster progress compared to group settings.
18 Months to 2 Years
18 Months to 2 Years
18 Months to 2 Years
During this period, children's language abilities grow rapidly. Here are key milestones to look out for:
Words: By 18 months, many children can say several single words. By 21 months, they might know between 50 to 100 words.
Types of Words: Expect to hear a mix of nouns, verbs, and some adjectives. Common words include names of family members, everyday objects, and favorite foods.
Following Instructions: Children can follow simple one-step instructions, such as "Come here" or "Give me the ball."
Recognizing Names: They can recognize and respond to their own name and the names of familiar people and objects.
21-24 Months
18 Months to 2 Years
18 Months to 2 Years
Two-Word Phrases: Around 21-24 months, children start combining two words to form simple phrases like "more milk," "big truck," or "mommy go."
Questions and Commands: They begin to understand and answer simple questions, as well as follow two-step commands like "Pick up the toy and give it to me."
Word Count: By the age of 2, most children have a vocabulary of around 200-300 words.
Exploring New Words: They frequently pick up new words, often after hearing them only once or twice.
Gestures: Use of gestures alongside words, such as pointing, nodding, or shaking their head.
Eye Contact: Improved eye contact when speaking or listening to others.
24 to 30 Months
18 Months to 2 Years
24 to 30 Months
Simple Phrases: Expect them to form simple two- to three-word phrases like "want cookie" or "big truck."
Simple Commands: They should begin to follow simple instructions such as "come here" or "sit down."
Recognizing Names: Your child will recognize and name family members and favorite toys.
Basic Concepts: They will start understanding basic concepts like "big" vs. "small" and "up" vs. "down."
Pronouns & Possessives: Start using pronouns like "me," "you," "my," and possessive forms like "mine."
Young School Age Children
Social stories, games, crafts, songs and videos will be used to guide patient in development and application of trained social skills.
Goals may focus on:
- Greetings/introductions/farewells
- Monitoring body language
- Asking questions and answering questions
- Personal space recognition
- Sharing ideas and maintaining topics
- Listening to others
- Expressing needs/wants
- Accepting suggestions
- Accepting "NO"
- Identify emotions
Tweens and Teens
Direct teaching, sequential thought processing, role-playing, and video modeling are used to enhance and supplement social language skills.
Sessions may focus on the following skills:
- Asking questions in class
- Working as park of a group
- Saying Hello and goodbye
- Asking someone out on a date
- Making supportive statements
- Interviewing for a job
- Interrupting a conversation
- Asking for help when needed
- Respecting each other's space
- Making mistake
- Giving class presentations
- Forbidden topics
- Doing difficult schoolwork
