Speech Therapy for Kids
RISE Pediatric Therapies (RPT) offers specialized speech therapy services to support your child as they grow and develop their speech and language skills. If you have questions about your child’s speech and language development or you have been referred for pediatric speech therapy services by your child’s healthcare provider, we are here to help. Contact us at (407) 904-1600 for more information. We are located in West Orange County and proudly serve Orlando, FL, and the surrounding areas.
Key Areas of Speech and Language Intervention for Children
Speech therapy services are essential for bridging developmental gaps, ensuring your child continues to progress with their communication, language, and social skills during critical developmental years. Our speech language therapists will help teach the following skills:
Articulation:
Articulation refers to how clearly a child is speaking. If a child is difficult to understand, they may be producing speech sound errors. We teach how to make speech sounds using the mouth, lips, and tongue.
Language Therapy:
This type of therapy can support your child’s receptive language or expressive language skills. Your child might work on following directions, answering questions, comprehending stories/conversations, building vocabulary, and formulating sentence structure to effectively communicate with others.
Voice Therapy:
Refers to how we use our vocal folds and breath to make sounds. Our voice can be loud or soft or high- or low-pitched. The quality of our voice can be affected by talking too much, yelling, or frequent coughing.
Fluency:
Refers to the rhythm of our speech. Someone who stutters may repeat sounds, like t-t-t-table, use “um” or “uh,” or pause a lot when talking.
Augmentative & Alternative Communication
People of all ages can use AAC if they have trouble with speech or language skills. Some people use AAC throughout their life. Others may use AAC only for a short time. An SLP can help find the right AAC system for you or your child. A multidisciplinary evaluation is most beneficial if you are curious whether or not an AAC device would support your child. Please contact your local FAAST center for additional resources, information, and support.
Explore Milestones and Hearing First Before Assuming Your Child Has a Speech Delay
To see a more complete list of milestones, view our Speech & Language Therapy Milestones page.
Please remember, all children develop at their own rate. What you may think is a disorder could simply be that your child is not yet old enough to have achieved an age-related milestone.
- Our communication milestone charts explain when most children who speak only one language will reach each milestone.
- It is recommended that your child be close to reaching each milestone listed by the time he/she reaches the top of the age range.
- Missing one skill in the age range does not mean that your child has a speech and/or language delay.
You may want to speak to your pediatrician if you have any concerns that your child is not meeting these milestones.
Hospitals now routinely perform hearing screening on infants in the first day or two after birth.
- If an infant doesn’t pass the initial screening, he or she is referred for further testing by a pediatric audiologist.
- Even if you think your child’s hearing is normal, it is important to follow up with the audiologist for additional testing and evaluation.
- If your child has a history of frequent ear infections, seeing an audiologist for a hearing evaluation can be beneficial in identifying any hearing loss that could be present.
If you have additional questions or concerns about your child’s hearing, we can connect you with local audiologists for evaluations.
Pediatric Feeding Therapy
Young children sometimes need the help of a feeding and swallowing specialist if they are not meeting age-appropriate feeding milestones. A pediatric feeding specialist will conduct a feeding evaluation to assess the different phases of feeding and swallowing: the oral phase and the pharyngeal phase.
- The therapist will assess the oral structures and oral motor skills used in consuming different textures, including liquids and solids.
- Your child’s feeding position, behavior, and oral movements are observed and assessed to ensure that your child is safe for oral eating.
- In addition, an infant feeding specialist can help to improve the suck-swallow-breathe coordination in infants as they learn to feed. Infant feeding therapy has proven successful in helping babies who struggle with eating and drinking.
If your child needs alternative methods of eating, a speech language pathologist (SLP) can, with physician clearance, support your child in safe oral trials, helping your child to develop a positive relationship with eating.
Common Speech & Language Disorders
A child can have difficulties with speech skills, language skills, or both. At RISE Pediatric Therapies, our pediatric speech therapy clinic offers professional, compassionate therapy services for many disorders.
- Receptive Language Disorder. This occurs when a child has difficulty understanding what others say and/or write.
- Expressive Language Disorder. Problems sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings is an expressive issue. It is possible to have both receptive and expressive language delays/deficits.
- Social Communication Disorder. A social communication disorder is characterized by persistent difficulties with the use of verbal and nonverbal language for social purposes. Primary difficulties may be in social interaction, social understanding, pragmatics, language processing, or any combination of the above. This can affect a child’s ability to make new friends, participate in conversations with peers, and demonstrate appropriate peer interactions.
- Auditory Processing Disorder. Children with auditory processing disorder may exhibit a variety of listening and related complaints. For example, they may have difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments, following directions, and discriminating between similar sounding speech sounds. Sometimes they may behave as if a hearing loss is present, often asking for repetition or clarification. In school, children with APD may have difficulty with spelling, reading, and understanding information presented verbally in the classroom.
- Stuttering. Stuttering is an interruption in the flow of speech characterized by repetitions (sounds, syllables, words, phrases), sound prolongations, blocks, interjections, and revisions. It is important to note that stuttering is normal and developmentally appropriate in children up until the age of 6. Stuttering is more than just disfluencies. Stuttering also may include tension and negative feelings about talking. Stuttering can change from day to day. Children may have times when they are fluent and times when they stutter more. Stress or excitement can lead to more stuttering.
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Additional Services from RISE Pediatric Therapies
Once the team identifies the developmental skills that need intervention, they develop a coordinated care plan, individualized to your child’s needs, developmental age, and the family’s priorities. In addition to speech therapy, the plan can include any or all of these services:
Why Choose Us
Experienced and highly trained therapists.
Compassionate, family-oriented care and caregiver training.
Exceptional personalized programs designed by your child’s coordinated care team.
Professional systems of support for growth and achievement.
Play-based therapy to create a fun, engaging environment where your child can learn.
Local Pediatric Speech Therapy
The caring specialists of RISE Pediatric Therapies are here to offer hope with our expert pediatric speech therapy service and pediatric feeding disorder treatment. Contact us at (407) 904-1600 for more information. Located in West Orange County, we serve Orlando, FL, and the surrounding areas including Horizon West, Apopka, Orange County, and Lake County.