Daria Gail Speech, Beacon, NY (2025)

Daria is NY State licensed and holds her Certificate of Clinical Competence with the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA). Within ASHA, she is a member of the special interest groups, Augmentative and Alternative Communication and Telepractice. With over eight years of experience servicing children ages 1-12 with special needs in a school, through Early Intervention services, and within

her own private practice, Daria approaches every child with compassion, empathy, and a whole lot of energy!

01/04/2025

I’m now an NLA trained speech-language therapist. This is my listing on the Meaningful Speech clinician registry.

NLA stands for natural language acquisition, which is also known as gestalt language processing. It’s a framework for how children naturally learn language and gives us, as speech-language therapists more tools for understanding and supporting our kiddos’ communication.

Gestalt language processing (GLP) is common in autistic and neurodivergent children, but can also be seen in neurotypical children. Some characteristics of GLPers are:
⭐️Learn language in chunks
⭐️Repeat phrases and/or scripts from language they’ve heard
⭐️Have rich intonation
⭐️May often be unintelligible
⭐️Have difficulty understanding context and questions

If your child has any of these communicative characteristics or you’re having a hard time communicating with your child and want to learn more, feel free to reach out!

12/12/2024

Constantly listening and learning. Neurodiversity is not just a buzz word, it is a human concept that should be talked about ALL the time, until it becomes a word that doesn’t need to be specified after my letters as an SLP.

10/15/2024

If I could give parents☝️ONE☝️tip to support their child’s language development and communication.. it would be to ask less ⬇️ questions❓. Across most contexts, in any situation, no matter your child’s age, no matter your child’s neurotype, no matter your child’s language abilities.. ask less ⬇️ questions❓. Here’s why:

Questions can create communicative pressure → they require and expect a response, which can be challenging for any child, especially one who struggles with communicating. Questions can also be hard to answer, depending on your child’s level of comprehension, or understanding, of language.

Instead of asking a question, try making a comment. Comments invite a response💬without pressure or expectations. Comments provide a model for what the child could say. Comments lend themselves to broader responses and more varied communication. Let’s try some:

❌Instead of: “How many duckies are there?”
☝️Try: “There’s 2 duckies!” or “Duckies, quack quack!”

❌Instead of: “Where’s the car going?”
☝️Try: “Beep beep, my car’s driving to the couch!” or “The car’s driving to daddy!” or “Vroom vroom!”

❌Instead of: “What color do you want?”
☝️Try: “I’m gonna use blue.” or “I wonder which color you’ll choose.”

❌Instead of: “What are you doing?”
☝️Try: “I can jump, too!” or “I love jumping.” or “Jump jump jump!”

❌Instead of: “Do you like the pasta?”
☝️Try: “Mmm, yummy pasta.” or “Yummm, I love pasta.” or “pasta!”

10/01/2024

When we talk about honoring ⭐️all⭐️forms of communication, we have to remember to apply that to all forms of communication development. Not everyone learns🧠language in the same way, not all development is linear📈, and not all children express themselves🗣️in the same way.
Better understanding Gestalt Language Processing, or Natural Language Acquisition, helps us better understand our kiddos who may not be benefiting from the traditional “building block”🧱approach to language therapy.
If you feel like your child may be a gestalt language processor, feel free to reach out! 😊

Address

Beacon, NY

Website

http://dariagailspeech.com/

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