Speech Therapy

Autism Spectrum Disorders

One of the most important things you can do as a parent or caregiver is to to learn the early signs of autism and become familiar with the typical developmental milestones that your child should be reaching. While every child develops differently, we know that early treatment can improve outcomes dramatically. Studies show that early intensive behavioral intervention improves learning, communication, and social skills in young children with autism spectrum disorders.

Autism spectrum disorders can affect language abilities. For this reason, speech-language pathology aims to enable children with ASDs to develop these skills in order to integrate socially.

Social Communication Disorders

These children have difficulties with the use of communication in social settings, either verbally and non-verbally. This often manifests itself in problems understanding social interactions and how to respond to them, difficulties participating in a group or a small or limited social circle.

Communication

Good communication development starts in the first year of life and goes far beyond learning how to talk. Communication skills are the best tool to prevent behavior problems and make it easier to handle moments of that all infants and toddlers face.

Developmental Language Disorders

Smiling girls sitting at table in elementary class

Developmental Language Disorders, also called dysphasia, leads to language development problems. The child may have difficulty expressing themself, but also in understanding others.

Fluency Disorders

This speech disorder affects the fluidity, or fluency, of speech.

Functional Routines

Daily routines are meaningful contexts for young children to learn new skills because they are predicable, functional, and occur numerous times throughout the day. When therapy is embedded in children's regular routines and activities, skills learned are functional and meaningful for children and their caregivers.

Learning Disabilities

Dyslexia, dysorthographia, and dyscalulia are neurodevelopmental disorders that affect learning abilities in some areas depending on the disability (reading, writing, math, etc.).

Speech and Articulation Disorders

Students with difficulties in the production of certain sounds, syllables and words can make a child's speech difficult to understand or even unintelligible. It can also impact their ability to read or spell accurateley.

Language Delays

These delays can have several consequences including difficulties in understanding instructions, understanding and producing complete sentences, grammatical difficulties in being understood by adults and peers, etc.

Other Troubles

Contact Changing Tides Therapy Services if your child struggles with:

following directions
completing daily activities independently
following routines at home
transitioning between activities, people, and/or environments
reading a room
expressing more complex ideas
understanding inferences
using a variety of vocabulary terms
reading or spoken language comprehension

Jill Zank, MS, CCC-SLP

Jill Zank holds a Master of Science degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders from East Carolina University and maintains her Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) with the American Speech Hearing Association (ASHA). She has extensive training in working with children ages birth through middle school.