Speech pathology for children in Alderley and Brisbane north suburbs

Disfluency, or bumpy speech, is a typical part of a little one’s development. We know that children are prone to disfluency when they begin to talk in longer sentences, generally around three to four years of age.

However, disfluency that persists for several months or that has a significant impact on child’s communication may not be part of typical development. In fact, such difficulties with disfluency may be part of a more ongoing, disordered fluency difficulty. Cooee Speech Pathology provides Lidcombe-based assessment and speech therapy for children up to seven years of age. From this age, strategy-based approaches to fluency are taken.

Reasons to seek assistance from a child speech pathologist:

• Your child is over three-and-a-half years of age and stuttering.
• Your child has been stuttering for several months.
• There is a family history of stuttering.
• Your child is becoming frustrated or embarrassed by their stuttering.
• Your child’s stuttering is becoming worse, and you are noticing a difference in the types of stutters that your son or daughter is producing.
• Parental concern and the desire for more information.

If you are concerned, we suggest calling the clinic and booking in. Fluency-based child speech therapy is typically provided weekly for 45 minutes.

What you can expect from paediatric speech therapy

• Increased fluency and confidence in communication
• A better understanding of fluency and how you can support your child’s fluency within the home environment.

We know children develop their language skills at different rates, but usually by the time a child is 12 months old they are using their words to refer to people and objects and by the time your little one is two they should be communicating in two-or-more-word sentences.

Children who have not yet started talking may need some support to begin to use their words and are often referred to as late talkers. A common phrase that we hear is “boys are always later than girls” and while the prevalence of late talkers is significantly higher in boys than in girls, support and assistance should be sought straight away, rather than waiting to see. Our child speech pathologists provide a developmental play approach to therapy.

Reasons to seek assistance from a child speech therapist

• Your child does not seem to be listening to you.
• Your child doesn’t appear to enjoy sounds or respond to them.
• Your little one isn’t using a range of words by 18 months.
• Your child isn’t trying to join words together by two-and-a-half years of age.
• Your child is frustrated by not being able to speak to or be understood by others.
• They have difficulties understanding what you say.
• They do not engage in simple games with you or understand your gestures/signs.
• Your little one has an unusual voice (e.g. it sounds husky).

Please contact our child speech pathology clinic and book your child in for a short assessment session if you are concerned.

What you can expect from kids’ speech therapy

• Increased expressive communication.
• Improved ability to tell you stories and what they want.
• Reduction in frustration.
• A better understanding of how children’s language develops and things you can do at home to support it.

By the time children are two years old they should be communicating in two or more word sentences and by the time they’re three to four years of age, their sentences should be much longer and more complex. Early intervention and support is always best and it is believed that 20 per cent of four year old children have difficulty understanding or using language. If you are concerned it is always best to get a child speech pathologist’s professional opinion.

Reasons to seek child speech therapy services

• Your child is communicating in single words and they are older than two.
• Your child is missing the ‘little’ words from their sentences (e.g.what the child said ‘cat mouth”, what the child actually meant “the cat is eating”).
• Your child can’t find the right word to use when speaking.
• Your child can’t be understood by other people.

If you are concerned about any of the above, we suggest calling our clinic and booking your child in for a long assessment session. Language-based speech therapy for kids is typically provided weekly or fortnightly.

What you can expect from child speech therapy

• Increased expressive communication.
• Improved ability to tell you stories and say what they want.
• Reduction in frustration.
• Improved interaction and a better understanding of language development and how you can support your child in the home.

Speech is comprised of articulation (how speech sounds are made in the mouth), voice and fluency. By the time children are at pre-school, their speech should be understood by people outside of the family 75 per cent of the time. By age five, children should be understood 95 – 100 per cent of the time by people outside of the family. We all know it is cute when our little one says “look dere’s a gog! Instead of “look there’s a dog” but at what age does this become a problem?

By four years of age, most children can say most sounds correctly (e.g., m, n, h, w, p, b, t, d, k, g, ng, f, y, s, z, ch, j, sh, l). They can use many consonant clusters, which are combinations of two or more sounds (e.g., tw, sp, gl).

Reason to seek assistance from a child speech pathologist

• Your child cannot say the above sounds correctly at four years of age.
• Familiar and unfamiliar people are having trouble understanding your child.
• You find yourself having to interpret what your child is saying to other people.
• Your child is frustrated when trying to communicate.

Please contact our child speech therapists and book your child in if you are concerned. Speech or articulation-based therapy is typically provided weekly or fortnightly.

What you can expect from paediatric speech therapy

• Improved intelligibility.
• Improved ability to tell you stories and say what they want.
• Reduction in frustration.

Child speech pathologists provide assessments and therapy for literacy difficulties – that is: reading, writing and spelling challenges. We support many children who are struggling to keep up with and access the school curriculum. Unlike a tutoring service, our assessments and kids’ speech pathology explores why breakdowns are occurring, and we provide systematic approaches to phonics to support their reading improvements.

By pin-pointing which core literacy processing domain(s) your child is having difficulty with, we can provide individualised reading therapy to support their unique needs.

Reasons to seek assistance from paediatric speech pathologists

• Your child is struggling to acquire sight words and keep up with classroom reading expectations.
• Your child is frustrated with reading and is avoiding either school-based or home-based reading activities.
• Despite lots of extra practice, your child’s reading is continuing to be effortful, slow and laboured.
• Your child has a history of speech and language difficulties (we know there is a relationship between speech and language difficulties and later literacy development).
• Your child is struggling to understand what they have read.

What you can expect from child speech pathology

• Increased confidence around reading.
• An improvement in functional reading abilities (accuracy, speech and comprehension).
• Increased independence around reading tasks.

Kids speech pathologists support literacy difficulties, including reading, writing and spelling challenges. To be a successful reader, an individual must be able to understand the words on the page and obtain meaning from the text. If a child is having difficulty obtaining meaning from texts despite being a fluent reader, they may be experiencing specific difficulties with their reading comprehension.

To successfully comprehend, a reader must be able to: (1) activate background knowledge of the text, (2) they must understand each word’s meaning, (3) they must be able to understand sentences and (4) they may need to infer or predict. Reading comprehension may arise from a breakdown in any or all of these areas.

We provide a strategy-based approach to support reading comprehension difficulties. By teaching children strategies that they can use to support their comprehension (i.e., visualisation) we can feel more confident that they will be able to independently understand what they read within the home and school environment.

Reasons to seek assistance from a kids’ speech pathologist

• Your child experiences difficulty answering questions about what they have just read.
• Completing homework tasks that require your child to answer questions or complete a book review are challenging.
• Your child has a history of language difficulties.

What you can expect from kids’ speech therapy

• Increased ability to answer questions and talk about books that have been read.
• Increased independence in the understanding of books.
• Increased enjoyment and insight from reading.
• Increased ability to complete homework and assignments that require a child to read and interpret the task independently.

Research tells us that children should be having conversations around three years of age. While their conversations may not be completely adult-like, they should begin to start telling you about their day at kindy or about something special that has happened. This task may be challenging for children who have language difficulties. If your child is having difficulties having such conversations they may tell you that they “don’t remember” or “nothing happened” or you may even find that they do not respond to your question.

We provide narrative-based intervention to support children who are having difficulties understanding or telling personal stories. Our child speech therapy has a functional focus and aims to ensure that we are providing children with the skills to be able to use narrative skills for social and academic purposes within the kindy and school environment.

Reasons to seek assistance from a child speech therapist

• Your child experiences difficulty talking to you about their day or recent events.
• Your child has a history of language difficulties.
• Your child experiences difficulty understanding questions relating to their day.

What you can expect from child speech therapy

• An ability to talk about their day at kindy or prep.
• Increased confidence sharing stories.
• Increased ability to answer questions about their day.

Play is a complex developmental milestone that occurs in stages. As a child develops, you should see them playing around and with children more and more. You should also observe them using more language in their play, and also activating higher language abilities – such as problem solving, inferencing and negotiation. There are many possible reasons why a child may experience difficulty with play (e.g., language development, attention etc).

Our speech pathologists and paediatric occupational therapist work in close connection to understand what barriers might be stopping your child from reaching their full play potential.

Reasons to seek child speech pathology

• Your child consistently opts to play alone.
• Your child attempts to play with others but is unsuccessful.
• Your child becomes routinely becomes upset when playing with others, when frustrated they may hurt others they are playing with.
• Your child doesn’t play with toys in a way you would expect them to for their age.
• Your child struggles to understand other children during play.

What you can expect from therapy

• Increasing amounts of play and an increased ability to play with others.
• Receiving feelings of enjoyment and love from your child during play.
• Increased language during play.

Writing is a complex process which draws upon oral language and phonics (sound knowledge) based abilities. A difficulty with writing may stem from either a language or phonics basis or both. Children must also use fine motor abilities to control and manipulate their pen or pencil when connecting their sound knowledge to letter formation knowledge (orthographic knowledge) to write words on the page. Children also need to be able to regulate their body in space to sit and complete writing work over increasing periods of time.

Our child speech pathologists provide assessments which identify where writing breakdowns are occurring. We then provide functional, strategy-based approaches for supporting children to write more independently. We liaise closely with your child’s classroom teacher to ensure our work overlaps with classroom focuses.

Reasons to seek assistance from a child speech pathologist

• You struggle to understand your child’s writing.
• You child demonstrates frustration during writing activities.
• Your child is struggling to meet classroom writing expectations.

What you can expect from paediatric speech therapy

• Increased confidence and independence around writing tasks.
• Increased ability to express ideas through writing forms.
• Your child exploring different writing genres.

Communication is a basic human right for every person. We at Cooee Speech Pathology firmly believe in this right and work closely with family and teams to support children who may have or require alternative and augmentative communication styles. Our assessment and child speech therapy approaches are highly individualised, functional and align closely with Family Centred Practice principles to ensure we are supporting communication styles that suit each unique family.

Some therapy forms and communication styles we support children and families with are: DiR(™) Floortime Model, Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), Pragmatic Organisation Dynamic Display (PODD books), Aided Language Stimulation techniques (ALS boards/charts) and Proloquo2Go™.

Reasons to seek assistance from a child speech therapist

• You would like your child to become an intentional communicator.
• You would like your child to use more eye contact or gestures.
• You would like your child to be able to say more.
• Your child is frustrated by their difficulties with communication.
• You experience difficulty communicating with your child.
• You are not sure how you can communicate with your child.

What you can expect from kids’ speech therapy

• An increased ability to communication with your child.
• More insight into their unique communication profile.
• Reduced frustration.
• Increased knowledge of complex communication styles and how you can continue supporting your child across their life continuum.

Child speech pathologists provide support for the communication basis of emotional literacy – that is, the ability to understand and express feelings. Our assessment and therapy is highly individualised, functional and aims to support social communication within the home and schooling environment. Our clients who seek social communication or emotional literacy intervention often receive therapy from a psychologist for counselling services.

Our assessment identifies areas that are leading to social communication difficulties, and provides speech therapy for kids to increase skills at the functional level. Our work often supports children and adolescents who have difficulties with social initiation and interaction, or social understanding.

Reasons to seek assistance from a child speech pathologist

• Your child has difficulty initiating and maintaining social interaction.
• Your child has difficulty understanding what their friends are saying.
• Your child has difficulty using language when playing.
• Your child has difficulty “reading between the lines” and finds others’ emotions and non-verbal language difficult to understand.
• Your child experiences difficulties negotiating, persuading or asserting herself or himself.

What you can expect from speech therapy for children

• Increased confidence interacting with peers.
• Increased participation within schooling and extracurricular events.
• Increased understanding of and interpreting social interactions.

Speech Pathologists work with children who are experiencing difficulty with their feeding and eating skills.

At Cooee Speech we have speech pathologists who can help children with improving their feeding and eating skills.

Many children experience difficulty with eating foods, sometimes due to medical reasons, and other times for sensory reasons. At meal time, this might look like a child who is excessively slow to eat (e.g >30 min for dinner time), refuses certain foods/textures, will only eat a restricted diet, or has difficulty swallowing/keeping food in their mouth whilst eating.

At Cooee Speech Pathology, we can provide:

Assessment and Treatment for Feeding Difficulties including:

• Difficulties with chewing, or swallowing
• Difficulties with trying different textures of foods
• Helping children with expanding the range of foods they can eat

How does feeding therapy work?

At Cooee Speech we have speech pathologists trained a Responsive Approach to Feeding, and also have Occupational Therapists who can provide support around posture, positioning and motor skills.  We will also generally recommend involvement of a dietician where appropriate.

We can provide feeding therapy programs to non-acute feeding clients. If your child is at risk for aspiration, or choking, referral on to the public hospital system may be made.

We work closely with families, as following the program for feeding therapy is parent administered, in the home environment.

Before my child’s first appointment

You will be asked to help the Speech Pathologists by completing a food diary for one week prior to your first appointment, as well as completing a table of all foods the child currently eats and previously ate.

In this appointment the speech pathologist will comprehensively assess your child’s feeding skills, and provide you a plan for the week ahead.

You will be asked to provide food for these appointments, and the speech pathologist will tell you what to bring.

If you have more questions about feeding, please feel free to contact us!