What is language? What do we mean when we say “language”?
At Growing Together, we assess and teach receptive and expressive language skills across the child’s lifespan.
At the onset of life, we as speech therapists examine your child’s non-verbal language; a facial expression shared with Mom or Dad. Then baby points to something they like while looking at Mom. Next, the child adds a word to that gesture and now they are sharing their thoughts with verbal language. Soon after, we notice they are combining those words and speaking in sentences. When you connect those sentences, you have a story. Telling stories about yourself and others leads to the development of grammatical skills, organization of verbal output, and writing essays. And don’t forget social skills; speech therapists at Growing Together specialize in teaching language as it relates to our ability to socialize and participate with others. We are the experts at teaching better conversation skills, how to meaningfully modulate the pitch or volume of our voice, or how we interact with peers on the playground. We can help your child with any aspect of language development.
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What is therapy and what do we mean when we say “therapy”?
When we are doing therapy, we will shine a light on the specific skills that are disruptive to the child’s language development and design fun and functional ways to turn those weaknesses upside down. We might write a story together to help them learn about a social skill that is preventing them from making friends. We might play a board game while highlighting verb tenses or pronoun usage. We will blow bubbles to engage a youngster and draw their attention to the shape of mouth for saying the word “bubble”. Everything we do has a therapeutic reason and is designed to teach specific speech and language concepts.
How can language therapy help?
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Is your child not talking?
We can help with this. We have ways to teach first words and the beginning stages of word production.
2. Does your child have language processing difficulty?
We can teach your child to understand language at a level that is appropriate for them at the moment and build upon their listening skills incrementally.
3. Does your child have trouble expressing themselves clearly?
We will teach them to produce accurate sentences, with specific vocabulary, using age appropriate grammar and within the appropriate social situations.
4. Does your child have awkward interactions with their peers?
We can help with this. We will teach them how, when, where and with whom certain communication styles should be used and how to be a confident participant in their social world.