Overview
What is pediatric speech therapy?
Some children are born with a disorder that affects normal speech, such as a cleft palate or cerebral palsy (CP). Other children might have disorders that affect the brain, nerves or muscles, which can cause problems with how the brain and body control speech or swallowing actions. A speech and language pathologist provides therapy to help your child overcome these problems.
Benefits
Why does my child need pediatric speech therapy?
Communication and nutrition are important to your child’s development and well-being. There are several types of delays or disorders an infant, child or adolescent may have that require the help of a speech pathologist.
Feeding or swallowing - Also called dysphagia, these disorders might affect an infant’s ability to suck as needed for breast or bottle feeding, or a child’s ability to pick food up and close her lips around it. Speech pathologists with special skills can help diagnose and manage these problems so that your child can get proper nutrition.
Articulation - Your child might not be able to produce sounds correctly so that others understand. A speech pathologist can work with your child on articulation of difficult sounds.
Fluency - The speech pathologist helps a child who stutters, stops, or spends a long time on certain sounds when speaking.
Voice - Also called resonance, this is an unusual pitch or quality to your child’s voice that a pathologist can help your child or adolescent learn to control.
Some children also need help with language skills, such as use of words or composing sentences. For example, your child with Down syndrome usually understands much more of what he hears than he shows by words when he speaks. Your child could benefit from speech therapy to improve his spoken vocabulary, grammar and use of language.