littleowlspeechpathology

01/22/2023

We are excited to announce that we will have a second office space available starting in February! It is located on Sioux Road in Sherwood Park. We can’t wait to start seeing clients here! We have some Saturday appointments available. Contact us to book!

09/14/2022

So when should you seek out help?

We can identify children at risk for speech sound disorders at 2 years of age based on the types of errors present.

“Early identification and intervention might resolve speech difficulties before they become ingrained, avoiding the educational and social negative consequences of unintelligible speech.”

Mary Claessen, Tess Beattie, Rhian Roberts, Suze Leitao, Anne Whitworth & Barbara Dodd (2017) Is two too early? Assessing toddlers’ phonology, Speech, Language and Hearing, 20:2, 91-101

So please, don’t wait and see. If you have concerns or worries that your child does not seem to be developing speech like other children, go see an SLP. They will be able to tell you if they think intervention is needed🙂

08/31/2022

As parents, we are often really good at deciphering our child’s speech. But how well should strangers be able to understand our child? Swipe to see the results from the latest research in this area.

Let me know if you have questions 🙂

Hustad et al (2021) Speech Development Between 30 and 119 Months in Typical Children I: Intelligibility Growth Curves for Single-Word and Multiword Productions

08/28/2022

A fun rescue game we played in therapy to target the V sound. This client was working on V in all positions of words (beginning, middle, end) and I was able to target all of them with this game. And he LOVED it. There were a lot of dinosaurs hidden which let us get many repetitions of our words in 🙌🏻.

You can work on speech sounds with any toy. You just have to be creative and think of words that have the target sound 🙂

08/25/2022

When you have a child with a lot of speech sound errors that is difficult to understand, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to correct all of their errors all at once. But this will be overwhelming for your child, frustrating, and ineffective.

Instead, try choosing just ONE sound. Focus on that sound for a whole week, and then switch to a different sound if you want. And when trying to help your child with a sound, I would recommend:

1) Exaggerate that sound in your own speech for the whole week to help your child build awareness of the sound and see how it is produced

2) Repeat back your child’s words with the correct production, but DO NOT ask them to fix it. However, if they do fix it on their own, give them some praise!

08/20/2022

I see so many parents (with the best intentions) trying to get their children to say sounds that they just aren’t ready for. This may actually cause more harm than good. Here’s why I would recommend simply repeating it back correctly and leaving it at that:
• It will develop your child’s awareness of the sound which is an important skill to have before they make the sound
• If you try to get them to make a sound before they are ready, this can lead to frustration which in turn can make them resistant to future sound practice and potential therapy
• If you don’t know how to teach the sound, they may end up practicing it incorrectly which just further reinforces the incorrect pattern, making it more difficult to fix

Hope this helps!

*Note: if your child can easily correct a sound and doesn’t get frustrated, then by all means prompt them to fix it 🙂

08/18/2022

08/18/2022

08/18/2022

08/18/2022