How Pediatric Speech Therapy Can Help Your Child
Do you notice your toddler only says a few words and struggles to make certain sounds? Is your child quiet in social situations or struggles to communicate with peers? Pediatric speech therapists at Skills on the Hill in Washington, DC and Arlington, VA can help your child improve their speech and gain confidence when playing and interacting with others!
Pediatric speech therapists are highly trained and skilled at helping children with communication challenges (speaking and understanding). We love working with children of all ages that may be experiencing developmental delays, struggling to fulfill speech and language milestones, and those having issues with eating and swallowing food.
Communication difficulties make engaging with their peers and adults challenging and interfere with learning, exploring, and playing. Our therapist’s ultimate goal is to build a personalized therapy plan for your child’s communication issues and help them improve their speech, language, and motor abilities in a friendly and welcoming environment!
At Skills on the Hill in Washington, DC and Arlington, VA we provide many types of pediatric therapies to help you or your child. We work with children of all ages to ensure they receive the best care.
Request an appointment and learn more about the programs we offer for children.
What is pediatric speech therapy?
Pediatric speech therapists help children with communication challenges in speaking and understanding communication. Pediatric therapists also help children with eating and swallowing difficulties.
Our speech therapists work with children with difficulty with one or a combination of multiple speech-related issues, including perception, motor production, or mental representation of the sounds in speech word creation(i.e., phonological representation).
Most children will exhibit some errors when they first learn to utter new words, but these mistakes fade as a child gets older. And for every sound, there is an age range for when they should be able to make it correctly.
When these errors in speech continue past a particular age range, it is called a speech sound disorder and should be addressed by a speech-language pathologist (i.e., speech therapist).
There are some common indicators to look out for if you are wondering if your child could benefit from speech therapy.:
Here are some of the signs that might indicate that your child needs speech therapy, your child:
- Has a stutter
- They only say a small number of words and have difficulty articulating certain sounds
- Does not respond when spoken to or doesn’t understand simple statements
- Is quiet in social situations
- Does not seem to understand what is being said and/or is slow to respond or answer questions
- He/she is around three or older and does not make the sounds m, n, ng, p, f, h, and w.
- Has difficulty planning and sequencing actions or tasks
Our therapists also work with very young children and can help them with their pre-speech and eating abilities, swallowing, and oral-motor development.
If you have noticed your child is struggling to communicate with you, your family members, their peers, or teachers, contact Skills on the Hill in Washington, DC or Arlington, VA today. Our pediatric speech therapists can help your child grow and become more confident in their speaking abilities!
What to expect at Skills on the Hill speech therapy sessions
Our pediatric speech therapists at Skills on the Hill in Washington, DC and Arlington, VA will assess your child’s individual needs. They will help them develop their ability to communicate effectively using verbal and nonverbal language. We also work on their ability to tolerate sensory stimulation at mealtime and play.
Our team of pediatric speech therapists will use neurological and speech assessments to help identify what speech and language difficulties your child is dealing with. We will use this information to create a treatment plan with specific exercises to improve them.
Our treatments often include the following:
- Expressive and receptive language skills
- Problem-solving and reasoning
- Social skills
- Sign language
- Augmentative communication
At Skills on the Hill, our therapists can help your child learn to communicate, chew and swallow properly, and help improve their overall functioning and well-being.
Request an appointment at Skills on the Hill in Washington, DC or Arlington, VA today!
At Skills on the Hill in Washington, DC and Arlington, VA, your child will be given the best possible care and guidance to make sure they make continuous progress while having fun at the same time!
Sources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26208514/