Speech Therapy

Apraxia is the loss of the ability to co-ordinate and perform skilled, purposeful movements oral or verbal skills with accuracy. Dyspraxia/apraxia may be acquired (e.g. a head injury), or associated with delay of normal neurological development.

spoken information); auditory sequencing (ability of the brain to correctly comprehend the order of sentences or lists of words); and auditory memory for words, sentences and instructions (the ability of the child to remember spoken information), following instructions and recalling details.

Difficulty with these skills usually has a large impact on a child’s reading skills, scholastic performance and leads to language delays.

Refers to articulation, or the movement of the lips, tongue, cheeks and soft palate, to produce sounds and combinations of sounds. Usually, by 6 months, a child is using a variety of sounds in vocal play. By 12 months, a child is usually combining sounds into a few words or word-like appointments. By the age of 2 years, most speech is intelligible but usually not precise. Accuracy of sounds continues to improve as the child grows. A child with a speech disorder would have difficulty creating or forming speech.

Refers to the areas that control understanding information, processing information and forming words or gestures. The ability to follow directions, vocabulary, grammar, understanding of concepts and emotions are all part of language. A child with a language disorder would have difficulty understanding (receptive language disorder) and/or communicating (expressive language disorder) with other people.

This is the ability of the child to consciously reflect on sounds within words. It includes skills such as the ability to identify first, last and middle sounds; rhyming; the ability to break sentences into words and words into syllables; and the ability to join words, syllables and sounds to form new words. It includes the foundation skills that will be needed to learn to read and spell phonetic (sound) words, such as “plop”. It is the child’s ability to read.

Dysphagia is a condition in which swallowing is difficult or painful. Causes of dysphagia vary from neuromuscular diseases, neurological disorders, prematurity or the presence of a cleft lip or palate. Some children have difficulty with swallowing due to sensory discomfort with how food feels in their mouth. Gastric reflux my also contribute to dysphagia as well as oral-motor difficulties.