Supporting Communication at Every Age

An esti­mat­ed 40 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have a com­mu­ni­ca­tion dis­or­der. Quin­cy Med­ical Group (QMG) has a team of speech lan­guage pathol­o­gists (SLP) who care for all ages. SLPs work to pre­vent, assess, diag­nose, and treat speech, lan­guage, social com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cog­ni­tive-com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and swal­low­ing dis­or­ders in chil­dren and adults. 

“Speech-lan­guage pathol­o­gists wear mul­ti­ple hats in the areas of diag­no­sis and treat­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion dis­or­ders in pri­vate and edu­ca­tion­al set­tings,” said QMG’s Pedi­atric SLP Anne Zinn. ​“SLP’s see more and more chil­dren that have sig­nif­i­cant delays in not only com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but lan­guage, audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing, social skills, read­ing, spelling, com­pre­hen­sion, and pro­cess­ing which are all lan­guage- based disorders.”

This annu­al obser­vance brings atten­tion to the needs of those who have some form of hear­ing, speech, or lan­guage impair­ment. This aware­ness helps to ensure access to the audi­ol­o­gy and speech-lan­guage pathol­o­gy treat­ment that enables them to lead full and pro­duc­tive lives.

Below are some com­mon ques­tions regard­ing speech ther­a­py for children. 

What type of speech con­di­tions does the pedi­atric ther­a­py treat?

• Devel­op­men­tal Delays

• Receptive/​Expressive Lan­guage delays

• Feed­ing disorders 

• Speech sound delays 

• Aprax­ia

• Speech and lan­guage deficits asso­ci­at­ed with Autism and neu­ro­log­i­cal disorders 

• Stut­ter­ing

• Tongue Thrust

• Social Lan­guage

• Dif­fi­cul­ty Read­ing (dyslex­ia)

What are some signs that your child may need speech therapy? 

If a child aged 3 and under is pre­sent­ing these below, this would war­rant a speech and lan­guage evaluation: 

• Does not smile or inter­act with oth­ers (birth and older)

• Does not bab­ble (4 – 7 months)

• Makes only a few sounds or ges­tures, like point­ing (7 – 12 months)

• Does not under­stand what oth­ers say (7 months – 2 years)

• Says only a few words (12 – 18 months)

• Says words that are not eas­i­ly under­stood by oth­ers (18 months – 2 years)

• Does not put words togeth­er to make sen­tences (1.5 – 3 years)

• Should be under­stood by famil­iar lis­ten­ers 50% of the time (2 years)

• Pro­duces speech that is unclear, even to famil­iar peo­ple (2 – 3 years)

• Should be under­stood by unfa­mil­iar lis­ten­ers 75% of the time (3 years)

What are some treat­ment options offered?

• Glob­al Assess­ments that include a neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py eval­u­a­tion, and speech lan­guage ther­a­py eval­u­a­tion for dif­fer­en­tial diag­no­sis relat­ed to areas of lan­guage, Autism, dyslex­ia, ADHD, devel­op­men­tal delay

• Indi­vid­u­al­ized speech and lan­guage eval­u­a­tions and treatment

• Aquat­ic Therapy

• Feed­ing Ther­a­py from the ages to infan­cy and older

• Co treat­ments with oth­er disciplines

• Treat­ments uti­liz­ing speech gen­er­at­ing devices

• Treat­ments focus­ing on Social Lan­guage Thinking

Any­thing unique or inno­v­a­tive ways the QMG team uti­lizes to sup­port patients? 

The QMG SLP team meets week­ly as a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary team to dis­cuss patients and how to improve patient care. The team uti­lizes a total com­mu­ni­ca­tion approach as to use a vari­ety of modal­i­ties of com­mu­ni­ca­tion such as sign, oral, audi­to­ry, writ­ten and visu­al aids, depend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar needs and abil­i­ties of the person.

There are a vari­ety of tools, SLPs use to sup­port your child. These include:

• The uti­liza­tion of low tech and speech gen­er­at­ing device tech­nolo­gies in order to pro­vide a voice for non-ver­bal children.

• Aquat­ic Ther­a­py is uti­lized to pro­vide sen­so­ry input, increase moti­va­tion, improve posi­tions and breathe sup­port for speech and lan­guage pro­duc­tion. It pro­vides a dif­fer­ent set­ting for kids to state wants and needs

• Feed­ing ther­a­py is used for infants and old­er chil­dren who present with breast­feed­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, dif­fi­cult­ly drink­ing from a bot­tle, tran­si­tion­ing to purees and sol­id foods, oral anom­alies, atyp­i­cal eat­ing, and oro­fa­cial myofunc­tion­al disorders. 

• QMG pro­vides pedi­atric video flu­o­ro­scop­ic swal­low stud­ies in our Imag­ing Depart­ment in order to rule out any anatom­i­cal or phys­i­o­log­i­cal deficits. 

• Your child’s care goes beyond tar­get­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and feed­ing, but our SLPs also tar­get social emo­tion­al learn­ing, per­spec­tive learn­ing, exec­u­tive func­tion, and prob­lem solving. 

• We imple­ment indi­vid­u­al­ized speech ther­a­py as well as co treat­ments with oth­er dis­ci­plines, specif­i­cal­ly our phys­i­cal ther­a­pists, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists, and Cer­ti­fied Occu­pa­tion­al Ther­a­py Assistants. 

• QMG has a sen­so­ry gym, allow­ing our team to pro­vide to uti­lize move­ment into our ther­a­py sessions. 

• We pro­vide home pro­grams to our patients in order to gen­er­al­ize and car­ry­over skills targeted. 

What are some of the key ben­e­fits of ear­ly treatment?

• Max­i­mizes a child’s suc­cess. Treat­ment at any age is worth­while, but ear­li­er is usu­al­ly most effec­tive. Ear­ly treat­ment can reduce the need for school-based ser­vices later.

• Saves time and mon­ey. It can take less time to treat a com­mu­ni­ca­tion delay or dis­or­der when fam­i­lies act on the ear­ly warn­ing signs. Few­er treat­ment ses­sions can also mean few­er out-of-pock­et expenses. 

• Pre­pares a child for kinder­garten. What hap­pens between birth and age 3 lays the foun­da­tion for kinder­garten readi­ness. Strong speech, lan­guage, cog­ni­tive, and social skills are nec­es­sary for read­ing, writ­ing, and aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess — as well as all the oth­er demands of school. 

• Sets a child on a course to school, social, and life suc­cess. All fam­i­lies want what’s best for their chil­dren. Act­ing ear­ly can have pos­i­tive, long-last­ing effects on your child’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion, social rela­tion­ships, learn­ing, and dai­ly life activ­i­ties well into adulthood.

For more about Speech Ther­a­py ser­vices at QMG, vis­it https://​www​.quin​cymed​group​.com/​s​e​r​v​i​c​e​s​/​t​h​e​r​a​p​y​-​s​e​r​vices.