Specialties
Aphasia
Aphasia is a language disorder that can often be caused by a stroke. It means that you may have a hard time reading, writing, expressing your ideas and feelings, and understanding others.
“I know what I want to say, but I can’t say it.”
“I’ve felt so foggy since I’ve been in the hospital.”
“This is so different for me.”
“I feel like I cannot relate to my family and friends.”
… are some of the most common things our patients with aphasia share with us.
We have many years of experience working with persons with aphasia. We understand the all-encompassing therapy that is needed to get back to the life you love! Our practice focuses on maximizing quality of life through the life participation approach, as well as a combination of restorative or compensatory treatment approaches to support you and your family through your recovery.
Apraxia
Apraxia is a motor planning disorder that affects your ability to produce longer words and sentences.
Automatic speech, like counting and saying the alphabet, may be well preserved, but purposeful speech can require effort. Children and adults can experience Apraxia of speech.
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a speech disorder that occurs when a child’s brain has difficulty coordinating the precise oral movements needed to produce sounds in syllables, words, and phrases. This speech sound disorder has inconsistent errors on consonants and vowels, disrupted transitions between sounds and syllables, and inappropriate stress on words.
In adults, Apraxia of Speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder that is a result of damage to the brain that controls how your muscles move. If you have Apraxia, you have problems saying sounds correctly because you are experiencing difficulty moving your lips or tongue when you speak, and the errors are inconsistent. A brain injury, stroke, dementia, or brain diseases may cause Apraxia and can sometimes accompany aphasia and dysarthria as well.
Through speech exercises and tasks, we will break through your Apraxia and together produce more accurate and consistent speech that you can feel confident with during conversations every day.
Articulation
One of the most common reasons children see speech therapists is for articulation disorders.
Producing the wrong sound, producing a sound incorrectly, or omitting or switching sounds during speech are all considered articulation disorders.
Articulation disorders that go untreated may increase a child’s risk of persistent speech delays/disorders through childhood. These delays and disorders can cause difficulty in learning how to speak clearly, learning vocabulary, or reading or writing.
Children with articulation and speech disorders may experience regular communication breakdowns, teasing from their peers, or decreased self-confidence. The earlier an articulation disorder is detected and treated, the better!
Our therapists will target these articulation goals by starting to teach your child how to produce the sound correctly in isolation, in words and phrases, up until he or she is generalizing the correct sound during a conversation. Your child might think we’re playing games, and we are – but we’re teaching them correct production of age-appropriate sounds while we do it and increasing their self-confidence in social situations!
Autism Spectrum Disorder
People who are diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder may experience difficulties with learning, communication, and social interactions. Each person with Autism has a unique set of strengths and challenges, and their skills can range from highly skilled to severely challenged.
Families with a child diagnosed with Autism experience difficulty enjoying activities that most take for granted, such as mealtime, family parties, going to school, and holidays. Parents and siblings may feel overwhelmed, alone, and in need of a helping hand.
Speech therapists can intervene by teaching compensatory and coping strategies. These strategies can range from developing daily schedules, teaching and practicing expected behaviors/skills, and teaching how to communicate in more useful and functional ways.
Cognition
Cognition refers to your thinking – the way you acquire information and use it to function in the world around you.
Cognitive disorders can range from problems with memory, attention, and executive functioning skills. All of a sudden, going to the grocery, organizing your schedule, or even focusing on the TV show you are watching or the book you are reading has become more difficult. Your loved ones might have noticed you don’t seem like yourself these days. You may seem withdrawn, angry, sad, or frustrated – which isn’t like you.
We can work with you to enhance and improve your thinking skills to allow you to function independently at home, in the community, and work situations. We do this by retraining your brain through cognitive stimulation, practicing functional tasks, and focusing on what is important to you to be successful and enhance your quality of life.
Dysarthria
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder characterized by weakness, coordination, or spasticity in your speech muscles, resulting in what others perceive as “slurred speech.”
Dysarthria can be caused by a stroke, brain injury, or neurological/neuromuscular disorders. A person experiencing symptoms of dysarthria include slurred speech, speaking too quickly or too slowly, speaking softly, not being able to move your tongue or lips very well, or “robotic speech.”
Your speech therapist will teach you oral motor exercises, vocal strengthening exercises, speech strategies, or use of alternative and augmentative modes of communication.
Dysphagia
Dysphagia is a swallowing disorder that may result in coughing and choking during meals, the sensation that food and liquids “are going down the wrong pipe” or “sticking in your throat.”
There are many reasons why this may occur; weakness after a stroke or other neurological diagnosis, congenital or developmental conditions, obstructions or tumors, side effects of radiation therapy, all may result in swallowing difficulties.
Your speech therapist can provide you techniques to improve your swallowing, including providing you with facial and throat exercises, modifications of foods and liquids, changes in positioning to protect your airway, and swallowing sequences that will allow you to find enjoyment in mealtime again.
Early Intervention
Early Intervention includes children from birth to three years old who have delayed development of speech, language, or swallowing skills.
As your child’s speech therapist, we’ll utilize play and feeding therapy, as well as parent and family education for carryover of skills. We will teach your family to incorporate appropriate speech and language facilitation into your everyday lives, through reading, playing, singing, and exploring. By talking to your child more, expanding their utterances, and teaching them new vocabulary, together we support your child during their development.
Studies show that the earlier that services are delivered, the more likely children are to develop effective communication, language, and swallowing skills and achieve successful learning outcomes (Guralnick, 2011).
Guralnick, M. J. (2011). Why early intervention works: A systems perspective. Infants & Young Children, 24, 6–28.
Expressive/Receptive Language
Children with expressive or receptive language disorders may have trouble with what they hear or read or expressing themselves by speaking or writing. They also may experience regular communication breakdowns, frustration with communication at home or school, or decreased self-confidence.
Success in school depends on well-developed expressive and receptive language skills. To achieve these, we will provide your child with the support through one-on-one learning and activities, to develop age-appropriate language skills and set your child up for success!
Fluency
The smooth, forward flow of speech can become difficult at times.
If this difficulty persists, it may be diagnosed as stuttering or cluttering. About 8% of children have a period of stuttering. While most recover, up to 1% of people continue to stutter for the rest of their lives. For some, stuttering during conversations and everyday social situations may lead to decreased self-confidence, social anxiety, increased anger/frustration, or self-isolation.
We work with clients who stutter and teach fluency enhancing strategies or stuttering modifications. We introduce and utilize a variety of fluency techniques, both fluency shaping and modification, to find out which one(s) work best and will be the ones to carry over into life outside of the therapy room.
Education and counseling are also a major part of therapy for someone who stutters.
Phonological Processes
Phonological processes are a type of developmental articulation disorder in which ways of producing certain sounds persist beyond their expected milestone. For your child, this may look like he or she is not pronouncing the beginning or end of words, or peers or other communication partners cannot easily understand.
Our speech therapists will work with your child to facilitate a more mature sound production pattern.
There are many different approaches to addressing errors in phonological processes, but we won’t know that will work best for your child until we meet! We will use a combination of visual, verbal, and gestural cues to amplify your child’s target sounds and get them speaking at their age-appropriate level!
Post-Concussive Syndrome
Post-Concussive Syndrome can result from the mildest head injury.
If you experience anxiety, fatigue, memory, or sleep problems after a concussion, you may be suffering from post-concussive syndrome. You may feel foggy, exhausted, and overwhelmed throughout your day, even if you don’t feel like you have done much. All of these feelings can impact your school, work, and personal life, taking a toll on your independence and successes.
Sometimes brain rest alone is not enough. We can provide treatment to help you return to your usual self. We do this by providing you with the education you need, along with support for planning and organizing your life to lessen your cognitive fatigue and give you control of your life again.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
TBIs can be devastating and result in the inability to return to life as you knew it.
Your symptoms may range from mild memory loss to severe cognitive loss that makes it difficult for you to function in everyday situations. Doctors will treat your medical problems, but your SLP and other professionals will help you get back to your life.
Our speech therapists are here to support you and help you reach your maximum potential. An SLP can help a person who has had a TBI improve speech to be more clear, express thoughts more effectively, better understand conversations and things read, improve attention and memory, improve planning and organization, work on social skills, or safe swallowing.
Each person with a TBI will present differently and need a different level of therapy during their recovery.
Voice Disorders
Some voice problems come and go. But the ones that stick around longer may need to be treated by a Speech Language Pathologist (SLP).
An SLP may treat voice disorders including, but not limited to, laryngitis, vocal chord paresis or paralysis, spasmodic dysphonia, or Laryngopharyngeal Reflux (LPR). These disorders can be caused by structural changes or trauma to the vocal folds or larynx, neurologic changes, or psychogenic disorders.
Your voice is an important part of you! You need to use it daily and do not feel like yourself if you don’t sound like yourself. Have you noticed changes in your voice, such as lower volume, hoarse vocal quality? Do you have a dry mouth or sore throat? Or are you experiencing pain when you speak?
Your therapist will educate and work with you to develop sustainable vocal hygiene and vocal strengthening exercise regimen to get you sounding and feeling like yourself again!