A child’s speech and language skills are critical for both communication and academic success. Early speech and language problems, left undetected, may result in reading difficulties and academic delays.
Speech and Language Skills Evaluation
Parents are often concerned when their child’s speech and language skills seem to be developing more slowly than the child’s peers. Is a lisp a concern? Is an occasional stutter normal or does it require treatment?
Hope Haven offers comprehensive, affordable speech and language services for infants, children, adolescents and young adults in a warm, family-friendly atmosphere. These services include:
- Audiometric screening. A five-minute assessment can be administered to detect the presence of, or certify the absence of, hearing loss.
- Motor speech evaluation. Identifies the cause of and treatment strategies for pronunciation errors found in a child’s or adult’s conversational speech pattern.
- Comprehensive speech/language evaluation. This thorough assessment probes the full scope of receptive and expressive language capabilities including pronunciation, auditory processing, vocabulary acquisition, grammatical and syntactical usage, and dialog mastery.
All evaluation services include a review of the client’s medical/developmental history, administration of appropriate tests, written report of results and recommendations, and a parent/family conference to discuss the results of the findings and suggestions for further intervention.
A child should reach the following milestones at:
Three to six months: A child awakens or quiets to the sound of his mother’s voice. He typically turns eyes and head in the direction of the source of sound.
Seven to ten months: She turns her head and shoulders toward familiar sounds, even when she cannot see what is happening. Such sounds do not have to be loud to cause her to respond.
Eleven to fifteen months: He shows understanding of some words by appropriate behavior, for example, he points to or looks at familiar objects or people on request. She jabbers in response to a human voice, is apt to cry when there is thunder, or may frown when scolded. Imitation indicates he can hear the sounds and match them with his own sound production.
Eighteen months: She may begin to identify parts of the body. She should be able to show her nose or eyes. He should be using a few simple words. They are not complete or pronounced perfectly but are understandable.
Two years: He should be able to follow a few simple commands without visual clues. He should enjoy being read to and shown simple pictures in a book or magazine and will point out pictures when asked to do so. She should be using a variety of everyday words heard in the home and refer to herself by name. She should begin to put together sentences although they are not usually complete or grammatically complete.
Speech Therapy for Children
The main objective of the speech and language program is to assist clients in maximizing the effectiveness of communication abilities and to bolster speech/language skills in need of improvement. All therapy services include the development of a treatment plan with measurable goals and objectives, regular feedback sessions/observations opportunities for primary care givers, written progress notes distributed quarterly, and provision for carry-over exercises to practice at home during the course of day-to-day communications. Oral motor/feeding therapy is also available.