What is Pediatric Speech and Language Therapy?
Speech-Language therapy explores how an individual communicates with others in various environments.  Communication is so important in expressing our thoughts and needs, and is essential to a child’s overall development.   In addition, a speech pathologist plays a vital role with assisting children, who may have difficulty with language, speech, pragmatics (social skills), and swallowing/feeding development.  Early intervention is the key in ensuring a child’s success with understanding his or her environment through the means of communication.
Services that are provided for speech-language skills are:

Screenings

• Speech and language screenings is an informal process used to obtain a general overview of a child’s speech or language skills. Screenings usually indicate if further assessment is needed or not.  An evaluation is provided if further assessment is required to determine a possible language or speech disorder. 

 Evaluations

• A speech and language evaluation is required to investigate a child’s language or speech skills in depth.  Evaluations are implemented using standardized testing.  Standardized testing is a quantitative form of testing used to measure the child’s performance. A formal evaluation usually takes one to two hours to administer.

Language and development

• Our language to communicate with others is divided into several categories, and is based on developmental milestones.  Language is divided into four categories semantics, syntax, morphology, and pragmatic language.  Semantics is the study of meaning in a language.  It is the way a child communicates meaning through words, phrases, and sentences.  Syntax and morphology examines the structure of language, while pragmatic language examines the social aspect of language.
• Language development is based on developmental milestones that represents when a child may develop and master certain language structures.

Articulation and phonological development

• Articulation looks at children’s acquisition of individual phonemes and emphasizes motor control, while phonology studies a child’s acquisition to consonants and vowels.  An articulation disorder occurs when a child has difficulty with speech-motor-control. Phonological disorders occur when a child lacks the acquisition of sound patterns and the underlying processes of certain patterns.

Fluency

• Fluent speech is defined as smooth, flowing, and continuous speech.  Nonfluent speech or stuttered speech occurs as a result of dysrhythmic or disfluent speech.  Stuttering has been defined historically as a disorder of rhythm.

Oral Motor Control

• Oral motor examines a child’s ability to use the oral cavity’s structures and functions primarily for the purpose of breathing, speaking, eating, and drinking.

Feeding and swallowing

• Feeding and drinking is vital to a child’s growth and nutrition. Many children have difficulty with eating and swallowing various foods. Swallowing or dysphagia therapy looks at the impairments of the oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal phrases, and related causes.

Augmentative communication

• Augmentative and alternative communication (ACC) is a form of communication used for children who may have extremely limited oral communication skills.  Augmentative communication is seen through the use of various methods, materials, or devices.

Auditory Processing

• Examines the steps in which a child organizes and processes incoming and outgoing information.  The steps required to process information include organization, memory, attention, and discrimination.  Long and short term memory is especially important to processing information. Children with processing issues may need strategies to assist with attention, memory, discrimination, and sequencing.

• Screenings
• Evaluations
• Communication and development
• Articulation and fluency
• Feeding and swallowing
• Oral motor control
• Augmentative communication
• Social skills and social language
• Auditory Processing