Infant Feeding

• Infants with special needs, including Down Syndrome

• Functional evaluation to determine presence of tongue/lip ties, and impact on feeding

• Pre and post op therapy for a tongue/lip tie procedure

• Help with breast and bottle feeding issues:

  • Difficulty latching

  • Difficulty transferring milk

  • Low weight gain

Sensory-motor approach to feeding

The TalkTools Sensory-Motor Approach to Feeding considers sensory impacts on feeding as well as the oral-motor skills required for feeding. This approach systematically teaches the oral-motor skills required for: ​

• transitioning to solids

  • baby-led weaning and/or using purees

• chewing

• moving food

• spoon-feeding

• drinking (straw/open cup)

Therapy to improve speech/articulation, facial rest postures, and chewing/swallowing by addressing orofacial myofunctional disorders, including: 

• oral habits (thumbsucking, pacifiers)

• open mouth posture

• forward tongue posture

• tongue thrust

• tongue tie/lip tie

• dental malocclusions

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS)

A thorough evaluation will be completed to diagnose childhood apraxia of speech.

A variety of approaches will be utilized to treat CAS:

• PROMPT

• DTTC

• Kaufman successive approximations 

• Bjorem Speech Sound Cues

• Talktools Oral Placement Therapy

Dynamic TEmporal and Tactile Cueing (DTTC)

DTTC is a treatment approach designed for children with childhood apraxia of speech. It is designed to improve the brain’s ability to plan and program motor movements for speech. Cues are provided and then faded to promote independence. The child is provided with frequent practice of target words, with focus on movement between sounds.

NaturaL Language acquisition

Does your child communicate using delayed echolalia (scripting)? Do they repeat questions, books, and movies, but have a hard time generating spontaneous language? Your child might be a gestalt language processor. Gestalt language processors process language in chunks rather than one word at a time. The Natural Language Acquisition approach is used to guide us in helping a child move from echolalia to self-generated (original, flexible) language.

PROMPT

PROMPTS for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets is a tactile-kinesthetic (touch and feel) approach where an SLP places his/her hands on the client’s face to guide his/her jaw, lips, and tongue to move correctly to form words.

This approach can be used with all speech sound disorders including articulation, apraxia of speech, and dysarthria.  

Beckman Oral motor

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 Beckman Oral Motor Interventions provide assisted movement (using hands and tools) to activate muscle contraction to improve movement of the lips, cheeks, jaw and tongue to improve: feeding skills (chewing, moving food, swallowing, etc.), speech, drooling, etc. 

Oral Placement Therapy

TalkTools Oral Placement Therapy (OPT) uses a combination of: (1) auditory stimulation, (2) visual stimulation and (3) tactile stimulation to the mouth to improve speech clarity. 

OPT is used to improve articulator awareness, placement, stability, and muscle memory; to improve speech clarity.