Are you considering a career as a speech therapist (also known as SLPor speech language pathologist) or are you a new grad looking for speech therapy jobs? There are several different career paths you might take as a speech therapist:

• Pediatric Speech Therapist – speech therapists who only work with children in areas including language, fluency, pronunciation, swallowing or feeding. Workplaces can include private companies, clinics, schools, hospitals
• Adult Speech Therapist – speech therapists who only work with adults who typically have experienced some form of head or brain trauma or stroke resulting in speech problems. Workplaces can include private companies, hospitals, clinics, nursing homes.
• Management – speech therapists who work in a managerial role in a clinic, hospital, rehab facility, nursing home.
• Travel Speech Therapist – speech therapists who travel from facility to facility for short periods of time (a few months at each location).

If you’re looking for speech therapy job listings explore the latest postings at http://www.SpeechTherapyCareers.com

• I have had excellent success with the Kaufman program. This program is aimed at children who can copy some sounds correctly. http://www.kidspeech.com/

• The Nuffield program: http://www.ndp3.org/ is excellent for helping children increase and develop the number of sounds that they can copy correctly. This would be a better place to start if your child has true apraxia (which literally means no speech sounds)

• Ask around at your local play groups and preschools to hear about local SLPs who have a good reputation for treating apraxia. They may use one of the above programs or a program of their own that has worked well for them.

• The Apraxia-kids website recommends the following software in the resources section of their website: http://www.apraxia-kids.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=chKMI0PIIsE&b=788467&ct=464321

• There is some evidence that using another form of communication, such as sign language, picture communication or a voice output computer system might help to improve children’s articulation skills. However, more research is needed. In the meantime, it can reduce stress if the child is able to use these methods to communicate in the short term, until his speech improves.

• The Speech-EZ program has been recommended by some therapists. http://www.speech-ez.com/

Related Reading about Apraxia:

• Can You Cure My Child’s Apraxia of Speech?
• My Child Has Been Diagnosed With Apraxia. How Can I Improve My Child’s Success? I Want Him To Learn To Speak Clearly.
• I Want To Find a Cure For My Child’s Apraxia Of Speech. What Programs Do You Recommend?

There are many things that you can do to optimize your child’s chances of improving. After more than a decade of treating clients with apraxia and dyspraxia, I have noticed that some types of parents have children who improve quickly, even if the delay is quite severe. If possible, do the following:

• Notice the apraxia early and get it treated early (preferably by three years of age) by a qualified Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP).

• Get involved in your child’s therapy program. Ask your SLP if you can sit at the table with your child and try to play the games the way the SLP does. Ask for home programs and practice worksheets.

• Invest in some games that your child loves (like Pop Up Pirate). Put the game in the cupboard and only pull it out for speech practice.

• Read to your child and foster a love of reading. Let him sign out books from the library on topics that he is interested in.

In addition, I noticed that there are certain children with apraxia who improve more quickly than others. The characteristics of a child whose speech improves quickly include:

• An outgoing child with good self esteem, who is willing to try and make mistakes and try again. Make sure to find some interests and activities that your child can succeed at. Praise him for attempts, not just perfection.

• A child with good receptive language (understanding) has better outcomes for articulation as well. If your child has low receptive language scores, ask your Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) how you can support his receptive language improvement as well.

• A healthy child. Of course, you can’t always control the child’s health. But you can provide good nutrition, rest and medical care.

• Typical attention span. If this is a concern, ask your SLP or Occupational therapist (OT) for ideas to improve attention span.

• Imitation skills. Even if your child cannot yet copy sounds or words, you can improve imitation skills by working on actions, signs, gestures and fun noises like animal sounds or vehicle sounds.

  Related Reading about Apraxia:

  • Can You Cure My Child’s Apraxia of Speech?
  • My Child Has Been Diagnosed With Apraxia. How Can I Improve My Child’s Success? I Want Him To Learn To Speak Clearly.
  • I Want To Find a Cure For My Child’s Apraxia Of Speech. What Programs Do You Recommend?

Every child is different, and no one can predict whether or not the speech difficulties associated with apraxia (also called dyspraxia) will be cured in one year or several years. What we do know is that most children with apraxia, with speech therapy appropriate to their needs, will eventually learn to speak clearly and be understood. It may be a long and challenging process, but there is hope.

Related Reading about Apraxia:

• My Child Has Been Diagnosed With Apraxia. How Can I Improve My Child’s Success? I Want Him To Learn To Speak Clearly.
• I Want To Find a Cure For My Child’s Apraxia Of Speech. What Programs Do You Recommend?

My Baby Can Read Program: From a speech-language pathologist’s point of view, is this program useful?

Yes, if your goal is to teach your baby to read early, then I think that you can accomplish your goal with the My Baby Can Read program. It appears to be effective and interesting to babies. It can keep their interest and attention.

See this link for a review: http://www.theopinionatedparent.com/2007/04/13/my-baby-can-read/

However, I have some concerns: If you do this program, you are using up valuable time and energy to teach what is basically a splinter skill – almost a “human trick”. From an SLP perspective, the most important life skill is communication, not impressing others with early learned skills.

Instead, an SLP would concentrate on teaching social skills at this age, like taking turns passing a ball back and forth, making funny sounds and faces, labeling things the child is interested in, and looking at a caregiver’s face for shared enjoyment. Most learning happens just by watching the caregiver while he/ she goes about her business and talks to the baby, involving the baby where possible. If your baby has already mastered these social skills, then there would be no concern with adding reading. If your child doesn’t have social skills, or isn’t strong in her ability to connect to important adults in her life, then it would be better to concentrate on teaching these skills. If social skills are missed in babyhood, it’s possible that the child will not learn how to trust and connect to people, and that is a harder one to catch up on later.

What would be the benefit of learning to read as a baby?

A whole world opens up when a child learns to read. Literacy is like a key to open an amazing number of doors to worlds and experiences that would not be possible without it. If the child learns to love books at any early age, and experiences the success of learning to read as a baby could be life changing.

photo: chad_k

Is it helpful over the long term, to teach my baby to read now? Am I missing out on an important opportunity for my baby if I don’t teach him to read now?

It could be helpful to teach your baby to read. But most research on early reading shows that children with a good literacy foundation will learn to read and will probably catch up to their friends who learned to read as babies. A good foundation to give your baby now is reading to him, singing to him, exposing him to music, and exposing him to a variety of stimulating environments.

Ask a Speech Language Pathologist: At what age can babies learn to read?

It depends on the baby. There are a lot of different factors involved. If the baby is simply sight reading, then she should be able to do this once she has developed a visual memory. For example, even if you are not doing a reading program, the baby might memorize the cover of his favorite book and associate it with the story that he likes.

Ask a Speech Language Pathologist:  Is it true that your baby can learn to read?

Yes, a bright baby can learn to sight read (memorize words by how they look) and perhaps even to sound out new words, but it is rare. Most likely the baby would be memorizing words by their shape.

Speech therapy games and materials for Homeschooling

For parents who homeschool, children with speech and language delays present a unique challenge. For this reason “Small Talk” was developed by a Speech Language Pathologist to use as a homeschool program. This Speech therapy program can be purchased online: http://web.me.com/boompa/Homeschool_small_talk/Welcome.html

I reviewed the website and it appears that this Speech and Language program would useful for children with early language goals such as vocabulary, imitation, and early sound development. There are a lot of speech therapy games and ideas. Preschool children learn through play and the games in this preschool speech therapy program will help parents build a love for language in their children.

Speech therapy materials for Children with Apraxia

Before purchasing Speech therapy games or materials or to help your child with apraxia, please have him or her assessed by a Speech Language Pathologist to make sure that you are working on the correct goals.

Once your child is assessed you should have a list of goals to work on. Generally, Speech therapy for a child with apraxia (also called Childhood Apraxia of Speech or Dyspraxia) consists of practicing sounds starting at a simple level and then moving to more complex mouth movements and eventually to words and phrases. For some children, your Speech Language Pathologist may recommend starting at an earlier stage with muscle strengthening games and activities (called Oral Motor exercises) or simple mouth movements. Many children with apraxia find sign language helps them communicate their thoughts when they cannot make themselves understood.

Early vocabulary and imitation goals: The Baby Babble DVD (http://www.talkingchild.com/shop_BabyBabbleDVD.aspx) includes Oral motor exercises and some early sign language, so it is ideal for toddlers and younger preschoolers with speech and language delays.

Articulation Goals: Check out this link for Kaufman cards: http://www.superduperinc.com/products/view.aspx?pid=NS1002&stid=

These cards, although pricey, are great materials for working at home with children with apraxia. For children whose goals are at the single word level, the back of the card has approximations from simple to complex. For example a picture may show BROTHER, and on the back of the card it shows that the child may say only the “b” sound at first but eventually progress to “budder” and then to the correct pronunciation.

Parents will find that using the cards to play speech therapy games with kids will work better than just asking the child to name the cards. One example of a speech therapy game is to hide the cards around the room and find them with a flashlight. Children are asked to name the picture on one card before they can search for another card.

Again, please check with your Speech Language Pathologist to find out what the best goals are for your child.