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Speech Sound Disorders in children

Is your child having difficulty saying sounds correctly?
Or are you or others having trouble 
understanding your child?
I can help!

  • Articulation disorders focus on errors in the production of individual speech sounds.

  • Phonological disorders focus on predictable, rule-based errors, that affect more than one sound. It is often hard to differentiate between these types of speech sound disorders

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Evaluation & Therapy

A speech evaluation can help to determine specific articulation error types versus phonological error patterns in order to increase overall speech intelligibility (how well others can understand your child). Once this is completed, we can develop a plan of treatment and establish goals to address error types/patterns, teach you and your child techniques to promote carry over outside of sessions, and work toward independence and mastery!

Speech Therapy for articulation, phonological impairment, and childhood apraxia of speech

Articulation approaches:​

  • Targets each sound deviation and selected when the child's errors are assumed to be motor-based.

  • Goal is to correct production of the target sound(s).

Error types:

  • Substitutions

    • Example: "thing" for "sing" / "wat" for "rat"

  • Omissions/deletions

    • Example: "cu" for "cup" or "poon" for "spoon"​

  • Distortions

    • Example: a lateral "s"​

  • Additions

    • Example: "puhlay" for "play"

  • Syllable-level errors

    • Example: "tephone​" for "telephone"

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Phonological/language-based approaches:

  • Targets a group of sounds with similar error patterns in an effort to help the child internalize phonological rules and generalize these rules to other sounds within the pattern.

Error patterns / processes:

  • Backing

    • Example:​ "gog" for "dog"

  • Fronting

    • Example: "tan" for "can" or "doat" for "goat"

  • Stopping

    • Example​: "pish" for "fish" or "do" for "shoe"

  • Gliding

    • Example: "wabbit" for "rabbit" or "yeyo" for yellow"​

  • ​Final Consonant Deletion

    • Example: "dah" for "dog"​ or "reh" for "red"

  • Weak syllable Deletion

    • Example: "nana" for "banana"​

  • Cluster reduction

    • Example: "pot" for "spot"​

Speech Sound Disorders in adults

Are you or your loved one having difficulty articulating sounds clearly or are others having trouble understanding your speech due to Parkinson's or a recent stroke? 
I can help!

  • Dysarthria is a group of neurogenic speech disorders that occurs when the muscles involved are weak and uncoordinated that causes slurred or slow speech that is difficult to understand.

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  • Refers to any abnormalities in the strength, speed, range of motion steadiness, tone, or accuracy of movements required for breathing, phonatory, resonators, articulatory, or prosodic aspects of speech production.

Evaluation & Therapy

A speech sound evaluation involves an oral motor examination, assessment of perceptual speech and voice characteristics, identification of speech subsystems affected (articulation, phonation, respiration, resonance, and prosody), and assesses the impact the dysarthria has on speech intelligibility, naturalness, and communicative efficiency and effectiveness.

Using the Laptop

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  • Treatment sessions may include oral motor exercises if appropriate, a variety of speech and voice tasks, use of compensatory strategies to improve effectiveness of speech clarity, precision, and intelligibility.

  • My goal is to help you gain confidence during your interactions and daily conversations with others, implement use of techniques learned in therapy outside of our sessions, and ultimately improve overall communicative effectiveness and understanding.

  • In some cases, VitalStim Therapy can be beneficial to help oral motor strength, range of motion, tone, and coordination.

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