My Child Needs Help With …
Receptive language refers to how we understand and process spoken language. It is important for identifying vocabulary, and concepts, following directions, answering questions, listening, and memory. Comprehending language is generally required before expressive language.
Services Receptive language can be taught through many structured and functional activities. Memory tasks, visuals, and hands-on sequenced activities are some of the many ways to increase comprehension. It’s great to learn while participating in activities of daily living, playing games, and physical activities. All require comprehension and memory.
I love helping clients understand spoken language.
Pragmatic/Social Language is the ability to read social cues, emotions, turn-taking, regulation, empathy, active listening, conversation, perspective-taking, predicting, problem-solving, and being a good friend. In younger children, it starts with simply learning how to play and take turns. In older children/teens it includes everything to conversational skills.
Services. In all areas, I teach understanding emotions. There are so many ways to target social skills, but games are my favorite at any age for endless reasons including everything stated above. Role-playing and confidence-building are other helpful tools that benefit both younger kids and teens.
Oral Motor planning is the ability of the brain to tell the mouth what to do. It’s the coordination, strength, and mobility of the mouth. Good oral motor skills can be taught early and are important for feeding and speech sound production. They help manipulate food in our mouths and coordinate the muscle movements from one sound to the next during connected speech. It takes about 100 muscles to speak!
Services for oral motor planning will target practicing lip/tongue/mouth movements through fun activities. Think bubbles, whistles silly imitation in the mirror etc. We do a lot of blowing and sucking for lip strength, tongue retraction and breath support for talking and whole body regulation. The most fun is working on tongue twisters that are often difficult for older kids with motor planning difficulty. It’s rewarding to see them get better.
Expressive language refers to our ability to express our thoughts, ideas, and information. It can be as simple as getting your needs met to describing a complex sequenced activity. Delays in expressive language can include but are not limited to, generating/combining words to make sentences, grammar, asking questions, and describing.
Services Children often have both mixed receptive and expressive language difficulties and can be taught in the same way, through a variety of structured and functional activities to target each specific need of language. Look Do Say and describing sequenced activities is a great way to target language. My end goal is to have clients describe an event or a task.
Executive functioning is the ability to organize, plan, predict, problem solve, control impulses take perspective, and be flexible with the ultimate outcome of executing a function. It can be as simple as getting a glass of water or as complex as completing a corporate presentation. Children with ADHD often present with difficulties in Executive functioning. as requires frontal lobe thinking the fully developed brains lack. However, early practice is a good predictor of later success.
Services. Participation in sequenced activities that LOOK DO SAY provides is great for teaching executive functioning. Clients at any age will learn how to start, organize, plan and, (most importantly and often forgot), complete tasks. We’ll focus more on whole body learning, relaxation, impulse control, and staying task. It’s great to see how proud clients are when they succeed.
Feeding disorders are when a child avoids certain foods and is very specific about textures, smells, food groups. It can include problems with sucking, eating from a spoon, chewing or drinking from a cup. There can be many underlying conditions but it’s often related to poor oral motor development or sensory processing difficulties. In some cases it can also be related to reinforcement in the home like only giving the child what they want to the other end of pushing them to eat what they don’t want.
Services Feeding difficulties often lead to family stress because you just want to your child to eat and be healthy. In therapy, I will treat your child ‘gently’ and create a ‘safe’ environment to encourage food exploration. We will also do food prep and family meals will be encouraged. This will create a fun, positive environment. I also have lots of information on nutrition.
Motor planning not only helps us perform body movements but it’s a skill that helps us remember them. Gross motor skills are the large muscles like the arms and legs. These are often developed before fine motor skills, including small muscle movements of the hands. Speech is also a fine motor movement. The area in the brain that controls the mouth is next to the area that controls the hands. Did you ever see someone’s mouth have reflexive reactions when they feed a baby?
Services will provide a variety of gross and fine motor planning to help develop speech. All require coming up with an idea, having a plan then finally doing or saying it. Look Do Say and sequencing activities help to support this. Fine motor exercises help wire the area of the brain for speech. Working on speech and motor activities at the same time is often more motivating.
Oral Motor planning is the ability of the brain to tell the mouth what to do. It’s the coordination, strength, and mobility of the mouth. Good oral motor skills are important for feeding and speech sound production.
Services for oral motor planning will target practicing lip/tongue/mouth movements, It also includes activities of blowing and sucking for lip strength, tongue retraction and breath support for talking and regulation. The most fun is working on tongue twisters that are often difficult for kids with motor planning difficulty. It’s rewarding to see them get successful.
Sensory integration is how the brain receives, organizes, and responds to sensory input and it affects how we behave. Kids who do not have integrated sensory systems present as either ‘Sensory Seekers’ or ‘Sensory Avoiders’ and sometimes have a mix. These are the kids who either love or hate getting messy, love or hate swinging, etc. There’s often a relationship between speech/ language delays and regulation. This typically falls under the discipline of Occupational therapy but, incorporating both disciplines into sessions, results in happier kids with successful outcomes. I have that experience.
Services will provide sensory input throughout sessions (swinging, bouncing, crashing, physical play, messy play) that help kids stay focused and organized. Sensory breaks/activities help with those structured, more difficult tasks. I come equipped with activities!
Articulation is the production of speech sounds using different parts of your mouth.
Apraxia of Speech (AOS) is when the child’s brain has difficulty coordinating the motor movements of speech. These children are often more difficult to understand and require more intensive therapy.
Phonological Delays are primarily seen in younger children who do not outgrow typical patterns of errors. e.g. deleting the last sound of a word (ha/hat).
Services. Teaching speech sounds often requires repetitive practice of sounds/patterns taught in a hierarchy (e.g. sound, syllables, words, sentences, conversation). It can be tough but I make it fun.
Parent involvement is the largest predictor of child success. Most learning happens with you, the parent. Providing in home therapy has been very successful for families. The child feels more supported and no need to generalize from the clinical/school setting. Children are like little scientists who are always trying to figure out how they can manipulate and control their environment. That is their job and we don’t give them much control.
Services. I will provide you with many simple techniques to help create a more positive and engaging environment. I encourage celebrating the little wins! Parents will learn to increase their ability to co-regulate and support their child with triggers to big emotions. We will become team players to help provide your child with respectful play and activities so they feel safe, happy and connected. Letting them be the teacher helps.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurological disorder that affects how people learn, behave, socialize and communicate with others. It is a spectrum disorder meaning that has a wide range of severity from barely noticeable to nonverbal. There is also a range of other conditions that accompany ASD such as anxiety, ADHD, obsessive compulsion, feeding, sleep, and gastrointestinal issues.
Services will include all ‘tricks in my bag’ with a large emphasis on early intervention and motor/sensory activities. I will provide a combination of child-led activities and encourage new activities that they often avoid. This is where Look Do Say really works. Once I get them to watch me, they tend to be more engaged when they get to perform an activity. It helps reduce repetitive behaviors and keeps us connected. Hands-on Sequencing to motivating activities is key.
