Speech Therapy- Speech Therapy: Setting Up a Summer of Success!

While summer break means extra time for fun for kids, it is important for children to maintain all the progress they made during the school year. If your child needs extra help with speech, language or reading, it may be wise to get them set up with summer services early. This extra boost in the summer will help them soar once they are back in school come autumn. 

Speech therapy can help a child’s pronunciation. All kids go through a period of speech pattern struggle. For example, a child might say, “Loot at that toot tat” rather than “Look at that cute cat.”  Many children grow out of this, but some do not; and for those who do not, speech therapy can be helpful to train the child to hear the difference between the errored sound and the correct pronunciation. A speech pathologist takes an inventory of a child’s abilities and helps to improve a child’s speech intelligibility.

For children with a history of speech challenges, the process of learning to read can be challenging. Speech therapy not only helps them improve their pronunciation, but it can also strengthen a child’s understanding of language’s sound structure. This improves their decoding (i.e., sounding out the sounds of words) and spelling skills.

As a speech language pathologist, I have worked extensively with kids of all ages for a decade. I work with children with developmental delays and children with specific diagnoses, including Autism and Down Syndrome. I also frequently collaborate with the occupational therapist and physical therapists at Whitefish Therapy & Sport Center, providing a team approach to care.