Pediatric Speech Therapy Services

Expressive Language Disorder: Difficulty formulating sentences to express information in spoken or written language. This may include use of vocabulary, syntax and morphology.

Receptive Language Disorder: Difficulty comprehending and processing spoken or written language

Pragmatic Disorders:  Difficulty using language in a socially appropriate way

An impairment in any of these areas can cause a child to have difficulty communicating with others.  Language disorders may exist for a variety of reasons including learning disabilities, hearing impairment or auditory processing deficits.  The team at Cheshire Fitness Zone will complete a thorough assessment to determine if a language disorder exists and will work directly with the child and family to develop a treatment plan to address specific skills.

Articulation disorders: A delay in developing sounds due to errors in how the sound is perceived (hearing), movement based weaknesses, or poor interpretation of sensory information in the oral cavity.

As speech and language skills develop, you may notice that your child may produce speech sounds incorrectly. In the early years, many of these errors are considered developmental. However, some speech sound errors are not typical, and can indicate a disorder.  At Cheshire Fitness Zone, our speech therapists will complete an assessment to determine if errors produced are considered developmental based on his or her age. Treatment programs are developed and home programming will be specially designed for practice in the natural environment.

Phonological disorders: Sound errors that occur when the child does not understand the rules for producing sounds and speech patterns within the context of spoken language beyond the developmentally appropriate age. Some examples of these include final consonant deletion (e.g. saying ca/cat) and syllable reduction (e.g. nana/banana).

It is common for phonological patterns to exist during the early years of development.  Many times, these patterns disappear naturally as the child’s language grows. However, if patterns persist, this may indicate a phonological disorder.  The therapists at Cheshire Fitness Zone have experience assessing these error patterns to determine if they are beyond the point of natural remediation.

Apraxia of Speech: Motor speech disorder that impacts the production of sounds, syllables and words. The difficulty stems from the brain, causing difficulties planning and coordinating the movements of the muscles in the absence of muscle weakness or paralysis.

Dysarthria:  motor speech disorder resulting from impaired movement of the muscles used for speech production. This includes the lips, tongue, vocal folds, and/or diaphragm.

Cleft Lip/Palate: Speech and feeding issues that remain after the surgical repair of the tissue in the lip or palate (roof of mouth) that did not form properly in utero, resulting in a physical separation between the lip, palate, or both.

Frontal Lisp or tongue thrust pattern: Protrusion of the tongue beyond the developmentally appropriate age that extends between the anterior teeth on sounds defined as sibilants ( s, z, sh, ch, and  j ).

Ankyloglossis (tongue-tie): Limited tongue movement as a result of  the abnormal shortness of the lingual frenum.

Lateral Lisp: Occurs when air escapes out the sides of the mouth on sibilant sounds instead of the middle creating a slushy sound.