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What is Tongue Thrust and How Can it be Treated?

young girl smiling

As speech pathologists, we always get this question: What is tongue thrust, and how can it be treated? Tongue thrust is when the tongue protrudes past the teeth during speech, eating, or at rest. Although tongue thrust is a typical pattern/reflex in infancy, it can become a habit causing difficulty with eating, speech, and even…

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Help Your Child Learn to Read: Phonological Awareness Games for Preschoolers- Segmenting and Blending

child reading

In my previous blog posts, I walked you guys through what Phonological Awareness is, why these skills are vitally important to the development of reading in children, and the five areas of Phonological Awareness that are vital to reading success. As a refresher, these skills include Rhyming, Segmentation, Blending, Isolation, Deletion, and Substitution. Today we…

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How To Teach the Basics of Motor Planning

girl on playground

Have you ever tried to bring in all of your groceries at once, just to save another trip to the car?  This requires significant motor planning.  Motor planning, also known as praxis, is the ability to perform a new or skilled motor task, and is dependent upon adequate body awareness, tactile processing, ideation, initiation, timing,…

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Does My Picky Kid Need Feeding Therapy?

child who is a picky eater

One of the basic jobs of a parent from the time their child is born is to make sure they are getting enough to eat. As a newborn this is based on amount of breast milk or formula they drink and we have a little more control of how much and when our babies eat.…

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Myofunctional Exercises Anyone can do at Home

Did you know exercise for your health is not only limited to your arms, core, and legs? Some activities can target your facial muscles and tongue, too. Just like workouts in the gym improve muscle strength and posture, Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy provides a workout for tongue and facial muscle strength for appropriate oral rest posture.…

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Phonological Awareness Skills All Kids Need to Learn

girl holding building blocks

As a Speech-Language Pathologist, I often see clients come into my office concerned about their child’s reading abilities. But what many people don’t know is that there are vital pre-reading skills (also called phonological awareness skills) that can be taught to set children up for future reading success! What is Phonological Awareness? Phonological Awareness is…

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5 Benefits of Doing Occupational Therapy Through Telehealth

virtual speech therapy

It’s hard to believe that almost three years ago we were ‘forced’ to switch to teletherapy for occupational therapy services. Today, we are still providing teletherapy; but this method of treatment is anything but forced. There are several unique benefits of doing occupational therapy through telehealth. Convenience This may be the most obvious of all…

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What is PROMPT Therapy?

PROMPT therapy

PROMPT stands for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. PROMPT can be used to treat speech delays and disorders, specifically helpful in treatment of Childhood Apraxia of Speech. The PROMPT technique uses a tactile approach that cues a client’s articulators (tongue, jaw, lips) on the proper placement to produce a single sound. PROMPT can…

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Treating Childhood Apraxia of Speech through Telepractice

teletherapy for apraxia

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a developmental disorder that is typically diagnosed by 2 years of age. Children with apraxia present with inconsistent speech sound errors on consonants and vowels and in repeated productions of syllables and words. Usually, these children also have difficulty imitating their parents when asked to repeat words back when…

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