Speech therapy is a treatment provided to kids as well as adults with communication problems and speech disorders. This treatment is provided by speech-language pathologists, who are most commonly known as speech therapists. Speech therapy techniques are mostly used to improve the communication skills of a person. These days most parents opt for Speech Therapy for Kids in Bethlehem, PA, to ensure that their kids face no communicative issues in the future.
Types of speech disorders that require speech therapy treatment
Different types of therapies are used to treat different types of communicative disorders of a child. The different types of speech therapies are as follows:
- Articulation disorder: Some children suffer from articulation disorder, because of which the child is unable to form certain word sounds properly. When a child has this specific speech disorder, he often tends to drop, swap, distort, or add certain word sounds. When a child pronounces ‘this’ as ‘thith,’ it is an example of word distortion.
- Fluency disorders: When the flow, speed, and rhythm of your child’s speech are disturbed, then your child has a fluency disorder. The two main types of fluency disorders are shuttering and cluttering. When a person has shuttering disorder, he faces trouble while getting out a sound, and his speech might be often blocked or uninterrupted and sometimes even repeat part of every word he pronounces. Whereas a person with cluttering disorder often speaks very fast and also merge different words while speaking.
- Resonance disorders: Sometimes blockage or obstructions occurs in the regular airflow of nasal or oral cavities, and it impacts the vibration that is responsible for the quality of voice; this causes resonance disorders. This disorder might also happen if the velopharyngeal is not able to close correctly. Cleft palate, neurological disorders, and swollen tonsils are often seen in patients with resonance disorder.
- Receptive disorders: When a child has a sensory disorder, he cannot understand and process what others say. A person with this disorder may seem uninterested in listening to someone, having a problem in understanding directions, or can understand only a limited vocabulary. Receptive disorders can be caused by autism or other language disorders.
- xpressive disorders: Expressive language disorder might make it difficult for your child to express their information correctly. A child with this disorder might face difficulty in forming correct sentences with perfect verb tenses. These disorders are sometimes associated with developmental impairments like down syndrome and hearing loss.
- Cognitive-communication disorders: If a child gets injured in that part of the brain which controls the ability to think, he or she will face difficulty in communicating, and this type of problem is known as a cognitive-communication disorder. It can be caused by abnormal brain development, a brain injury, or a specific neurological problem and can result in difficulty speaking and listening.
- Aphasia: Brain disorders might result in aphasia, and it is a communication disorder that can affect a persons’ ability to speak and understand others. Sometimes, it also affects the persons’ to read and write.
- Dysarthria: In this condition, a child might speak in a slow and slurred way because of the weakness or inability to control the muscles used while speaking. Nervous system disorders mostly cause it.
How does a pediatric speech therapist treat his patients?
Speech therapy of a child depends on the specific disorder the child has, his age, and needs. Some ways through which a pediatric speech therapist treats his patients are:
- A pediatric speech therapist often interacts with a child by talking and playing and using books with good pictures as a part of language intervention to stimulate their language development.
- A speech therapist often models correct sounds and syllables depending on the child’s age for teaching the child how to make certain sounds.
In The end
As a parent, you might be concerned if your child faces any problem while communicating, so don’t wait and consult good clinics like Lehigh valley speech therapyto ensure if he has any disorder and gets the best treatment.
