Where To Begin: The Wholistic Evaluation

An in-home evaluation is completed at the beginning of therapy in order to gather the most detailed picture of your child’s strengths and challenges and to have a baseline of skills for the development of a treatment plan. The assessment process is tailored to your child and may include the use of formal standardized testing, informal testing, parent report, play based assessment, and formal and informal observations. Along with the full spectrum of speech, language and feeding disorders evaluated, your child’s gross and fine motor skills as well as sensory processing will also be screened in order to assess all areas that may currently be impacting their ability to be the best they can be.

Communicating and Thinking: Speech and Language Therapy

In my practice the location for therapy is flexible and can take place in a variety of settings which best support your child’s goals. That may include your home, daycare, school playground, etc. A variety of evidence-based approaches are used, and sessions are created with your child’s interests and temperament in mind.

Consultation

A consultation may be scheduled with me for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you may need additional information about your child, but are not in need of a full evaluation. At times it can be incredibly helpful to sit and talk with someone new, in order to get a fresh opinion regarding a diagnosis, or to sort out and prioritize what may seem like an overwhelming amount of therapy options. I pride myself in my ability to listen to you, review all your information, and help you put together a comprehensive program that will address all your areas of concern. The pieces of the puzzle always fit together, sometimes it just takes a change in view.

Eating and Thriving: Feeding and Swallowing Evaluation and Therapy

Unfortunately eating is not always the joyful experience it should be. Having a child with a feeding problem causes stress not just for the child, but the entire family. I believe the root of early feeding problems is usually a physical one, whether it’s oral-motor difficulty, problems with sensory processing or learned negative feelings associated with eating due to reflux or food allergies/sensitivities. An initial evaluation is completed to asses your child’s oral-motor and oral-sensory skills. Information is also gathered to determine what has been tried in the past to improve eating, and what the current routines are around food. Discussion of recommendations, determining your goals and expectations, and the development of a treatment plan occur during the initial evaluation. An important part of therapy is establishing a trusting relationship and helping your child manage any understandable anxiety that has developed because of the feeding difficulty. The key to success is having knowledge of a variety of evidence based approaches, understanding your child, and being flexible.

Social skills/friends/community: pragmatics and pulling it all together

Research has shown that having friends can guard against bullying and sadness in children, build self-esteem and increase happiness. Fortunately, research also shows that social skills can be taught and worked on directly. Social skill therapy begins with individual sessions, and then transitions to a variety of settings for best practice which may include birthday parties, sports, restaurants, club meetings etc. Even animals have been included at times to promote social emotional development. Young adults also benefit from therapy in areas of direct and indirect communication, understanding and using body language, and folllowing social rules in order to better participate in activities and support transition to higher level education and/or employment.