Speech & Language Therapy

Our Approach

Each of the Speech Therapists at The Children’s Therapy SPOT undergoes a very intense amount of training via a series of workshops and a lengthy certification process in order to become PROMPT Certified. Each PROMPT therapist identifies the strengths and weaknesses of a client’s mental, physical, and social-emotional aspects of development. Our goal is to achieve balance in these areas so that our clients are able to communicate their ideas and make lasting and fruitful friendships and relationships.  The relationships we create through our family-centered approach are long-lasting and genuine.

PROMPT Therapy

The Children’s Therapy SPOT focuses on the use of  PROMPT Therapy  in order to help our clients reach their maximum communication potential.  The PROMPT approach focuses on the use of tactile-kinesthetic cues that the therapist will use to help guide your child’s articulators through the correct movements required to create verbal speech.  At the same time, the therapist is using functional activities that are appropriate for your child’s mental abilities to embed high-use functional language concepts.  All this is done in a loving, structured, and supportive setting in order to increase your child’s confidence and trust in their communication interactions.

Additionally, a PROMPT Therapist understands the importance of creating a balance between your child’s communicative strengths and weaknesses.  PROMPT Therapists are taught to be keen observers and problem solvers in order to determine when additional supports are required or, in some cases when too many demands have been placed on your child.

In order to be Certified in the PROMPT Therapy approach, the therapist must complete 2 three-day courses and submit 2 projects which clearly show the therapist’s complete understanding of the PROMPT approach, philosophy, and technique.

The Children’s Therapy SPOT is dedicated to providing the support and training to all of our speech therapists in order for them to reach the highest level of PROMPT Therapy.

Speech Sound Disorders

Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) is a broad term for a group of communication disorders with different causes that describe a variety of difficulties in how speech is produced, perceived, or represented phonologically that result in a speech that is difficult to understand.  Speech Sound disorders can be categorized into two categories: functional and organic.  The therapists at TCTS receive extensive training in the following areas:

Articulation Disorders

Articulation disorders are a form of functional SSD that has no specific cause or origin that results in sound errors, distortions, and/or substitutions.  An example of an articulation disorder would be trouble pronouncing the /r/ sound or distorting the production of /s/ so that it sounds like a “lisp”.

Motor Speech Disorders

Motor speech disorders are communication disorders that are caused by a disruption in the motor system that results in impaired, distorted, or unintelligible speech.  PROMPT Therapy is an extremely effective treatment approach for children with a variety of motor speech disorders, the most commonly known being Childhood Apraxia of Speech.  Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a form of motor speech disorder that results in children having a very difficult time producing correct movements of the muscles involved in speech for the production of intelligible words, sentences, and phrases. At  The Children’s Therapy SPOT, our licensed and PROMPT-trained therapists use a combination of mass practice drills that focus on articulatory muscle movements and distributed practices that allows for functional use of the movements and sounds into meaningful syllables, words, and phrases that can be embedded into fun and motivating activities that your children will enjoy!

Receptive and Expressive Language

The specialists at TCTS also provide speech therapy to children with a wide variety of Receptive and/or Expressive Language delays or disorders.  Some children have difficulty understanding words that they hear and/or read.  Children with receptive language disorders may appear to have difficulty with following directions, answering questions, completing conversational turns, and reading comprehension.  Some children have difficulty expressing their ideas or thoughts.  Children with expressive language disorders may appear to have difficulty developing age-appropriate vocabulary skills, forming appropriate words and sentence forms, using the “right” words, and taking conversational turns.

Autism (ASD), Down Syndrome, & other Syndromes

The highly trained speech pathologists at TCTS have gone through extensive training to understand and treat a wide variety of birth disorders.  Although each presents with its own unique traits, our approach allows us to create unique and individualized treatment plans for each family that incorporate OT and PT if needed.  Our holistic and integrated approach ensures that all of your children’s strengths and weaknesses will be incorporated into their therapies.

Social Communication Disorders

Social communication disorders involve a child’s difficulty with the use of language, either verbal or non-verbal, in social interactions.  At TCTS, we assess a child’s use of communicative functions to determine the extent of their communicative intents.  Additionally, we assess and treat social pragmatic language use and determines a child’s strengths and weaknesses in their use of language to interact with others and form long-lasting relationships.

Social Language

• Pre-Language Skills
• Social-Emotional Skills
• Pragmatic Language Skills
• Symbolic Play Groups
• Individualized peer modeling