Speech therapist for children
Speech therapist for children
A lot of school-going children have difficulty with speech, ranging from pronouncing words, sounds or phrases to adjusting their tone and prosody (volume, rate, pitch, and intonation). Most speech difficulties are overcome through time while others will result in most children needing to see a speech therapist in their lifetime. However, many of these children are not only impacted by speech difficulties, and carting them from one therapist to another can be overwhelming for parents and children alike. Catch Up Kids has trained behaviour analysts who can offer a comprehensive alterative to speech therapists for children. Our instructors are energetic, playful, and consistent in helping your child overcome their speech and other difficulties
Catch Up Kids’ instructors are trained in a method called PROMPT (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets) – a research-based method shown to create substantial gains in speech clarity and production.They offer one-on-one sessions that focus on the speech difficulty and any other difficulties your child may be having. Catch Up Kids instructors are different from the traditional speech therapists for children in the sense that they follow a tactile-kinesthetic treatment approach, which means they will touch the child’s neck, face, chest, and back to add pressure to the muscles for certain sounds. They work on the facial muscles and allow the child to feel where these muscles are and understand how the different muscles work together to form words and phrases.
When choosing a speech therapist for children, one should look for a therapist that is playful and one that will focus on activities that will motivate and stimulate the child. The instructors at Catch Up Kids will work on establishing a comfortable and trusting relationship with the children. This is important as the instructor will be touching the child’s face a lot, so the child has to be comfortable with the instructor. The instructor will always have activities and games to choose for their sessions and each activity has to be functional to the child. These activities and games also offer routine (so the child knows what is next) and multiple opportunities to practice the sound / word/ phrase. The activities should allow the child to learn through play.
At Catch Up Kids, each child receives a tailor-made programme design that is age appropriate and caters for the child’s preference of activities/games, and specific skills set. The instructor will create multiple opportunities to target the sounds/ words/ phrases through turn-taking. This allows the child the opportunity to take part in the session in the instructor’s role. Also giving the child the opportunity to not only teach the instructor but to know and feel the different uses of each facial muscles on the instructor’s face. A lot of children respond better to turn taking activities compared to sitting back and only being on the receiving end of the PROMPT input. So, when looking for a speech therapist for children, consider the valuable alternative of Catch Up Kids.
