Speech and Language Therapy

What speech and language therapy is

Speech and language therapy addresses how a child understands language and how they express it. Those are two different skills, and a child can struggle with one while the other develops normally. A toddler who follows every instruction you give but has only a handful of words has a different profile than a child who talks constantly but cannot answer a question about what they just heard.

Our speech-language pathologists start by working out which part of the system is under strain. Speech refers to the physical production of sound: whether a child can form the sounds of their language clearly enough to be understood. Language refers to the content underneath it, meaning vocabulary, grammar, and the ability to organize thoughts into something another person can follow. Social communication is a third area, covering how a child uses language with other people, including turn-taking, staying on topic and reading a listener’s response.

Treatment differs sharply depending on which of these is involved. A child with a motor planning difficulty needs a very different plan than a child whose sound errors follow a predictable pattern, even though both are hard to understand. Getting that distinction right at the start is the single biggest factor in how quickly a child makes progress, and it is why we do not begin therapy without a proper evaluation.

Parents most often arrive using the phrase speech delay, and that is a reasonable place to start. It covers several different situations, though, and sorting out which one is in front of us is exactly what the first evaluation is for.

Parents do most of the work, and that is by design

A child in weekly therapy spends less than an hour with a speech-language pathologist and the rest of the week with their family. No amount of clinical skill overcomes that ratio. The therapists who get the best results are the ones who successfully change what happens in the other one hundred and sixty-seven hours.

That is why our sessions are built around teaching parents specific techniques rather than performing therapy while a family watches. Your therapist will model a strategy, then ask you to try it while they are still in the room to coach you through it. You should expect to leave with a small number of concrete things to do during ordinary routines: bath time, the car, meals, getting dressed. Small numbers matter. A family given ten strategies does none of them.

Because so much of the work is coaching you rather than performing therapy on your child, a good deal of speech and language work carries well to a screen. We offer telepractice for language, articulation and parent coaching, and we will tell you plainly when a goal needs the room instead.

Who speech therapy helps

Families come to us with a wide range of concerns. Some of the most common reasons a child is referred for a speech and language evaluation:

• Few or no words by 18 months, or fewer than 50 words by age two
• Not combining two words together by around age two
• Speech that is hard for unfamiliar adults to understand after age three
• Difficulty following directions or answering questions
• Frustration, tantrums or withdrawal that seem tied to not being understood
• Loss of words or skills a child previously had, at any age
• Stuttering that persists beyond six months or is accompanied by struggle or avoidance
• Trouble holding a conversation, staying on topic or interacting with peers

We work with children whose communication difficulties occur on their own and children whose difficulties are part of a broader diagnosis, including:

• Speech sound disorders and articulation differences
• Childhood apraxia of speech
• Expressive and receptive language disorders
• Autism spectrum disorder
• Down syndrome and other genetic conditions
• Developmental delay
• Hearing loss
• Fluency disorders including stuttering

This list is not exhaustive and nothing on it is a diagnosis. If something here sounds like your child, an evaluation is the way to find out what is actually going on.

What a session looks like

Sessions are typically 30 to 60 minutes depending on a child’s age, endurance and goals. With young children the therapy looks like play, because play is where a toddler’s language actually lives. That is a clinical decision, not a way of passing the time.

1. We start where the child is

   Your therapist follows your child’s interest and builds the targets into it. A child who is engaged produces far more language than a child being asked to complete a worksheet.

2. High repetition, low pressure

   Progress in speech comes from many repetitions of the right target. Your therapist will find ways to get dozens of practice opportunities into an activity your child thinks is a game.

3. You are in the room

   We ask parents to attend and participate rather than wait outside. Watching the strategy being used, and then trying it yourself, is what makes it usable at home.

4. Clear goals and visible data

   You will know exactly what is being targeted and how your child is progressing against it. If something is not working, we would rather change it than repeat it.

Credentials

Every speech-language pathologist at Joy Therapy and Learning Center holds:

• A master’s degree in speech-language pathology
• A current license to practice in the state of Georgia
• The Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC-SLP) from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
• Ongoing continuing education as required to maintain licensure and certification

This page is not a diagnosis and nothing on it is medical advice. If something here sounds like your child, an evaluation is how you find out what is actually going on.