Speech Language Therapy Charlotte

Earlier this month, Stephanie Gerlich, a Speech Language Therapist at Child & Family Development's South Charlotte office, completed It Takes Two to Talk® — The Hanen Program® certification.

The It Takes Two to Talk program teaches parents, step-by-step, how to become their child’s most important language teacher. It is designed specifically for parents of young children (birth to 5 years of age) who have been identified as having a language delay. In a small, personalized group setting, parents learn practical strategies to help their children learn language naturally throughout their day together.

Melinda Bumgardner, another speech therapist at the Midtown office of Child and Family Development, is also certified. 

We will be sharing details about C&FD Hanen Parent groups soon.

Want to learn more about our Speech Language Therapy team and services? Click here to visit our website or click here to check out a brochure about our services.

Summer is here! Trade your backpacks for beach bags!

The car is packed, the family is excited, and chances are everyone is bored 30 minutes into the ride. If your family is taking a vacation from technology as well, try  these “unplugged” options to keep your kids thinking while passing the time. 

Classic license plate games

The options to play games using license plates are endless, depending on the age of your kids.

• Younger kids can call out letters in alphabetical order; the first one to Z wins.
• Ask your child to identify the letter and provide the correct sound. 
• Older kids can "collect" out-of-state plates they see. (Make it tougher by going in alphabetical order.)
• Write down the numbers and letters you see on license plates.  Ask kids to make words and number sentences using the numbers and letters you wrote down. 

Create a scavenger hunt

Create a scavenger hunt list before you leave.  Kids can search for everything from farm animals to popular landmarks.  Keep a running tally of what you see to practice math vocabulary with younger children. Who has the most, least, equal, how many more do the have?

MadLibs!

Who knew grammar could be so fun!  Children can take turns practicing parts of speech while creating silly stories.  MadLibs are available at most bookstores and have even been spotted at the Dollar Store on occasion.

The Picnic Game:  Practice working memory skills!

One player says, "I went to a picnic and brought” (then name a picnic favorite that begins with the letter A, like apples). The next player repeats the opening phrase, and then adds one that begins with B: "I brought an apple and some bread."  Make it challenging for older kids by naming objects they see along the way.  For example, A is for armadillo, B is for barn, etc.

We are glad to be celebrating 3 years in our South Charlotte office.

We moved into the 7000 square foot space back in 2010 and have covered every inch of it with therapy materials and equipment for kids, adolescents and young adults.

All 5 of our core services- Education, Psychology, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy and Speech Therapy- are offered here from the team of about 16 therapists.

Give us a call if you like a tour.

Summer is fast approaching and families are always asking for ways to carryover language skills  into the home. Summer is a perfect opportunity to get more language through everyday tasks. These tasks can be used for children with expressive and receptive language skills delays or deficits.  Here are some quick ideas that you can use to carryover your child's speech therapy goals:

-Cook! Cooking with your child offers numerous vocabulary, sequencing and communication opportunities! Talk about words like ingredients, supplies, steps for the recipe.

-Go to the park! Great opportunities to elicit prepositions and where questions! Going up and down on the slide and asking where to go next!

-Go on a nature scavenger hunt! Either at the park or in your back yard, have your child collect different items and then talk about then when they find them. Have them describe colors, shapes, textures and the location where they found them!

-Attend community activities! Many times in the summer, activities within the community are free. Having the child recall events from the activity and answer wh-questions about what they saw is a perfect way to elicit language.

-Plan a trip! Planning a trip could be as simple as going to the grocery store or a sleepover at a friends house. Have your child talk about items that are needed, sequence events, and ask questions about activities.

-Read! Make sure to read plenty of books with your child throughout the summer! Talk about characters, what happens next and think of different endings to the story!

-Play! Simply sitting down with your child, playing with their toys is a great time to access langauge! Toy houses, farm animals, tea sets, play dough, blocks are all great toys. Spend the time eliciting imagination in your child.

-Make something! Spend a day doing arts and crafts. Kids learn through doing!

Summer is about having fun and language activities can be easily added into your daily lives!

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about speech therapy at Child and Family Development, please contact me, Jayne Walton, M.A., CCC-SLP, by phone (704-541-9080 ext. 213) or email (jwalton@childandfamilydevelopment.com).

It is not uncommon for children to go through occasional periods of stuttering during the preschool years. Many children exhibit what is often referred to as normal nonfluency. Normal nonfluencies can include repetitions of parts of words (e.g., tha –tha-that’s my toy), fillers (e.g., um um um I don’t know), or whole word repetitions (e.g., Mommy Mommy I want that one). Young children who are learning how to combine words to form sentences my even start a sentence and revise it several times before coming up with the final sentence they would like to say. These periods of normal nonfluency often occur during periods of rapid language development where children are quickly expanding their ability to understand and use language, typically between the ages of 2 and 5.  

What if my child’s stuttering seems more severe?

Some children may demonstrate breaks in fluency that are more disruptive to the flow of their speech. These moments of stuttering tend to cause parents to become more concerned about their child’s speech. These patterns include:

• More than 2 repetitions of syllables or words (e.g., I-I-I-I-I got a boo boo)
• Holding out a sound (e.g., wwwwwwwwhat is that Mommy?)
• Stopping on a sound, also called a block, where no airflow or voice comes out
• Phrase repetitions (e.g., How about-how about-how about we play cars?)
• Clusters of moments of stuttering where the child demonstrates more than one type of disfluency (e.g., C-c-c-c-can I go-go-go outsssside to play?)

These types of disfluencies are considered to be risk factors for persistent stuttering. Other risk factors include:

• Stuttering is associated tension or struggle
• Awareness of stuttering (e.g., Mommy, why can’t I talk?)
• Associated behaviors that occur with moments of stuttering (e.g.,  hand movements, eye blinking, losing eye contact)
• Rises in pitch or volume during moments of stuttering
• Stuttering seems to occur more often than not
• Family history of stuttering
• If onset of stuttering was after 3.5 years of age
• If stuttering has persisted for greater than 6 months since onset
• Stuttering is more likely to persist in males

If you are concerned that your child is at risk for persistent stuttering, please contact a Child and Family Development office to schedule an appointment with a pediatric speech therapist. 

Check out the links below to find out more information about preschool stuttering.

http://www.stutteringhelp.org/7-tips-talking-your-child

http://www.stutteringhelp.org/content/parents-pre-schoolers

http://www.stutteringhelp.org/risk-factors

 Lots of us at Child and Family Development wore blue and white for the first-ever Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) Day! 

As a pediatric speech therapist with a lot of training and interest in helping kids with this diagnosis, it was an easy way for me to support my clients with CAS and CASANAS.

• Childhood Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder in which children have difficulty programming and planning the motor movements for speech.
• Top 3 characteristics of CAS: *Inconsistent errors with consonants and vowels, * lengthened pauses between sounds and/or syllables, and *Inappropriate stress on syllables and/or words.
• A licensed speech language pathologist is the appropriate person to diagnosis CAS.
• Early Intervention is crucial for children with CAS.
• Further information of CAS can be found at http://www.apraxia-kids.org/

Once again this year, I will be leading the C&FD team's participation in the 2nd Annual Walk for Apraxia in Charlotte on Saturday, September 28, 2013.  Mark your calendars!

Hello Bloggers!

I’ve recently moved back to my home state of North Carolina after practicing speech-language pathology in Los Angeles, California for 5 years to work at Child and Family Development in Charlotte.

In my previous settings, I took on a strong interest in verbal motor-planning and motor speech disorders such as childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), dysarthria and verbal dyspraxia. I became PROMPT (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Motor Phonetic Targets) trained 4 years ago and have been practicing the philosophy and techniques of this approach ever since! The PROMPT system has been used with phonological, developmentally delayed, dysarthric, dyspraxic, apraxic, hearing-impaired, autistic spectrum, and fluency disorders. The philosophy behind PROMPT is designed to integrate the most efficacious traditional and/or new approaches that augment, support, and enhance speech production interventions.

In treating children with motor speech disorders, I have also helped parents learn what to expect from their child when it comes to adequate speech production through all phases of treatment. I can imagine how frustrating it may be for a parent to hear a few simple words from their child for the first time only to never hear them again or to see your child struggle to produce new words.

Laura Mize, pediatric speech therapist, has a website with gobs of information for parents on motor speech disorders. Here is a link to one of my favorite articles called “Can’t vs. Won’t” focusing on a child that may demonstrate difficulty with speech production.

 (http://teachmetotalk.com/2011/05/03/cant-vs-wont/) 

Also, it’s a great website to peruse for early developmental milestones of speech and language and communication strategies for your toddlers. It’s also a great website for therapists as well with weekly tips for therapy ideas! Links below.

http://teachmetotalk.com/

http://promptinstitute.com/

http://teachmetotalk.com/2011/05/03/cant-vs-wont/

On May 2nd, I attended a TalkTools training!  This course was taught by Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson, M.S., CCC-SLP and presented by the Down Syndrome Association of Greater Charlotte.  I left this course with renewed enthusiasm about the field of Speech Language Pathology. 

This course focuses on the fact that there is often a physical reason for articulation issues.  Sara teaches the importance of using touch to teach as well as on the importance of using resistance and repetitions to improve muscle skills (speech/feeding) through Oral Placement Therapy (OPT).

I came back to to my work at Child and Family Development with new ideas, resources, and a desire to learn MORE!  I look foward to attending more TalkTools courses, using my new strategies with my current clients, and educating other professionals and parents about this approach!

To learn more about this approach check out their website at http://www.talktools.com

An intervention plan for the treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders requires a multidisciplinary team of professionals to create and tailor a plan to fit a child with ASD. This team approach typically includes speech and language therapy and occupational therapy.

Physical therapy is often a missing piece in a child with ASDs treatment intervention. I believe children are often are not referred to physical therapy because gross motor skills are not uncommonly their highest area of function. However, they cannot perform these skills on request or imitation. This affects their ability to play interactively with other children. Gross motor skills are critical on the “playing ground” of learning socially and interactively with other children. Physical therapy is an excellent option in addressing the core deficits of autism.

These limitations can include:

Sensory processing: These challenges can cause a child to be overly or under sensitive to certain areas of the environment such as light, touch, noise, smell or movement. They may avoid or excessively seek out certain sensations.

Communication: Expressive and Receptive language limitations with both verbal and nonverbal behavior can be associated with a delay or total lack of spoken language, involving initiating or sustaining a conversation with others.

Social interaction: Deficits in nonverbal behavior such as eye to eye contact, referencing, learning imitation skills and turn taking.

Motor planning: Motor planning delays may limit a child’s ability to conceive of movements, retrieve the correct plans for that movement from the brain, perform that movement especially in interaction with others, correct errors in that movement, and remember what worked in the plan so the movement could be more accurately and efficiently performed in the future.

Decreased muscle tone: Decreased or low muscle tone causes poor body mechanics. Low tone or muscle stiffness requires a child to expend more energy to perform movements. This can result in lack of coordination, clumsiness, gross motor skill delays, poor posture, poor walking mechanics, etc.

Physical Therapy Evaluations

When I perform a physical therapy evaluation with an individual on the spectrum, I usually perform a standardized gross motor skills assessment. I pay particular attention to the following:

• How much sensory preparation/heavy work/aerobic activity is required to organize my client to get them to an optimal state for concentrated work? How often do I need to return to sensory work to keep them organized? Do I need to embed the activity itself with sensory input to keep them focused?
• What types of sensory input calms or organizes them and what types of sensory input excites or disorganizes them?  Which type do I need to perform more?  Are they under aroused or over aroused?
• How hard I have to work to gain the child’s attention to give them a meaningful demonstration?
• Do they know to look at the most relevant detail of the demonstration?  For example, if I am walking on my tiptoes, do they look at my feet?
• Can they perform an activity on request? What level of complexity of an activity can they perform?  Bilateral only or unilateral?  Symmetrical only or asymmetrical as well?  Upper body only or lower body as well?  Do the upper and lower body movements need to mirror each other?  How many steps in a sequence can they copy?
• Do they understand movement in relationship to themselves, another person, or things in their environment? For example, can they stand behind a line, behind a person, raise their right hand, or lay on their belly?
• What support do they need to imitate an activity?  Do they need to be physically taken through the activity first? And then support faded? Do they need an immediate model? Can they copy an activity with a previous model? Do they perform better if a familiar caregiver or parent performs the activity first?
• Do they reference me or their caregiver to check in and see if they are doing an activity correctly?
• Do they understand implied cues (including gestural, facial, contextual, postural, tone/inflexion related) that a typical child would understand?  If I say, “Stand over there (while pointing) and catch the ball.”  Do they understand where to stand, what direction to face, and what basic body position to get into, i.e. they don’t face the wrong direction and don’t sit unless I am sitting.
• Do they have a history of interactional play with other children?  If so, what types of play can they engage in?  Parallel? Interactive? Pretend? Flexible? Rule bound games or sports?  

Need help?

If you want help with these suggestions or notice any of the above mentioned difficulties, a Physical Therapy evaluation can determine if your child is simply showing normal variability in gross motor development or if your child can benefit from intervention. Call me today at (704) 332-4834 ext. 114 to set up an evaluation. 

Child and Family Development therapists recently attended a great two-day course called A Dynamic Base of Support --  The Key To Enhancing Function.

The course was sponsored by Neuro-Developmental Treatment Association™ (NDTA) at Integrative Therapy Concepts near Charlotte.

It offered instruction and information about graded handling techniques and pediatric therapy strategies.

Among the therapists who attended:

• Mary Helen Bailey, Occupational Therapist
• Megan Bevington, Occupational Therapist
• Jessica Hoffarth, Occupational Therapist
• Michelle Pentz, Speech Therapist
• Courtney Stanley, Occupational Therapist 

The Fletcher School in Charlotte will host a free workshop on Apraxia on Thursday, April 25, 6 p.m. in the Rankin Room. The featured speaker is Sharon Gretz, M.Ed, Founder and Executive Director of the Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America (CASANA) and Apraxia-KIDS.

Apraxia 101 is a free workshop for parents only and will share information about childhood apraxia of speech in “parent-friendly” language. Some of the topics will include:

• How can we understand childhood apraxia of speech?
• What goes wrong in the speech process for our kids?
• What do we know about effective speech therapy and what it “looks like”?
• What progress can or should be expected?
• What is the long range prognosis for children with CAS?
• Key strategies for parents as advocates for children with CAS
• Open question and discussion period will follow to discuss a range of topics

The Fletcher school is at 8500 Sardis Road North, Charlotte NC 28270. Click here for map and directions.

Check in is from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Light refreshments and snacks will be available. The workshop will last until 9 p.m.

To Register

The cost for the workshop is free, but everyone must register in advance and space is limited. Click here to register now!

Have a question?

Please contact Sharon Gretz at sharong@apraxia-kids.org or at 412-343-7102.

Special Note

This seminar is brought to Charlotte thanks to the efforts of the volunteers, walkers, and supporters of the 2012 Charlotte Walk for Children with Apraxia of Speech. Their efforts produced over $30,000 raised during last year’s walk and one local benefit of this amazing achievement is this free seminar. 

More about the Featured Speaker

Sharon Gretz, M.Ed., is the founder and Executive Director of CASANA and Apraxia-KIDS. She has her Master’s degree in Counseling and has completed all course work toward a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders.  She has worked in the disability field for over 25 years, with expertise in organizational and program development.  In 2002, Ms. Gretz was honored by the National Council on Communicative Disorders/ASHA at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC when she was awarded the National Distinguished Service Award for her dedication to elevating national awareness and advocacy on behalf of children with CAS and their families.  In 2008 she was selected as a Community Champion by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for her work related to children with apraxia.  Sharon is the parent of a 21-year-old son, who was diagnosed at the age of 3 years with severe apraxia of speech.

Looking for a social skills group for your child this summer? Check out Social Butterflies Club™ at the South Charlotte office of Child and Family Development!

Social Butterflies Club™, founded in 2004 by Rhonda Osisek M.S., CCC-SLP in Virginia, helps children learn how to interact with peers while having fun with sensory and speech activities combined.

Both an occupational therapist and speech therapist leads this club at CFD. The children in the group may have a variety of diagnoses, such as expressive and/or receptive language problems, sensory processing difficulties, and fine motor deficits. The goal of the Social Butterflies Club™ is to teach the kids how to communicate with peers in a positive way that allows them to thrive outside of therapy.

Each child is screened as part of placement. Clubs are formed based on each child’s communication skills, social ability and age. The Club meets for 1-hour sessions for four consecutive days. Several schedule options are offered this summer.

We will be offering some fun themes including Going on a Picnic, Fourth of July, Under the Sea and Back to School. The club will be led by speech therapist Michelle Pentz, MS, CCC-SLP, and  occupational therapist Courtney Stanley, MS, OTR/L. 

Contact  Michelle Pentz, 704-541-9080 x214, mpentz@childandfamilydevelopment.com to register your child.

Click here for more details about the Social Butterflies Club™.

Click here for more information about the C&FD.

I am very excited to provide Speech-Language Therapy to students at The John Crosland School this year! As part of partnering with JCS, we are offering FREE speech and language screenings to their students.

A screening is a brief overview of strengths and weaknesses and is completed by a licensed therapist. A screening can help determine the need for an evaluation or make other recommendations. We use a standardized screening tool appropriate for your child’s age. Each screening is a 15-20 minute "one-on-one" session (child and therapist) and might also include a conversation with the teacher.

If you are interested in receiving a screening for your child who is currently attending The John Crosland School, please contact Stephanie Gerlich, M.S., CCC-SLP at 704-541-9080 ext.215 or email sgerlich@childandfamilydevelopment.com.