What is Speech Therapy?

Emmory Shipley, Communications Coordinator

May is Better Hearing and Speech Month, a chance to learn about speech therapy and how a speech language pathologist may help your child. At Open Arms Children’s Health, our integrated pediatric health center, speech language pathologists (SLPs) work with pediatricians to treat speech production, language, swallowing/feeding, stuttering, social skills, cognition, auditory processing, reading/writing skills, and use of alternative means of communication.

For children who are nonverbal, it is an SLP’s job to find them an alternative means of communication, called Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC). The most common forms of AAC are sign language, picture exchange, or speech generating electronic devices.

Some of the diagnoses treated by Open Arms speech therapists include autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, childhood apraxia of speech, developmental delay, central auditory processing disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome and neonatal abstinence syndrome, as well as other genetic disorders.

It’s important to talk to your child’s pediatrician about speech and language developmental milestones, possible signs of hearing loss, and other areas of concern related to speech pathology, such as feeding/swallowing, social skills, and cognition. Children must be able to hear speech and language to be able to adequately produce it, so it is important to make sure your child’s hearing is intact. Your pediatrician can help determine if your child would benefit from audiology and/or speech therapy services.

For more information about speech therapy, contact Open Arms Children’s Health at 502.596.1040.