Playdate Speech Therapy

03/14/2025

Whether your child has a language delay or not when you say “no” you are not conveying what you want them to do or what your expectations are, so be specific on exactly what you want them to do.

03/15/2023

Some parents ask: My child still isn't doing that yet but other kids are? And my response always is, never compare two kids let alone kids when one has a delay. When a kid has a delay, it's important to keep expectations at their functional age and nurture them with language stimulation to improve their language skills. Also remember you can't expect two kids to make progress at the same pace. Everyone has a different learning style and pace. Meet your kids where they are and help them grow by nurturing them.

01/18/2023

If you have little people who are not into toys, you become their toy. Animate yourself by playing games such as peekaboo or by singing movement and sing along songs. These are great for building prelinguistic skills such as joint attention and imitation in little ones.

01/01/2023

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and blessed New Year!!

12/27/2022

Wishing everyone a bright and joyous holiday season!!

12/09/2022

It's a rewarding moment to know that your name is one of your client's first words as it validates two important elements in a child's language development.

1) Teamwork between an SLP and parent, as the parent is carrying over the strategies used during the session to help support the child's language development. It is always a treasure to work closely with parents.

2) It shows the importance of repetition and bombarding target words. For instance, in this case, the parent has consistently used my name: "say hi to Ms. Uma", "say bye to Ms. Uma", "Ms.Uma this" and "Ms. Uma that".

Using the target words more frequently helps them learn that word much more faster.

11/01/2022

I'm both excited and proud to share that Playdate Speech Therapy was voted best in Charlotte's Best 2022 edition.

Refer to the link below to check out Charlotte's Best practices and businesses:
https://issuu.com/neruspublications/docs/2022cb_flipbook

10/25/2022

Happy Diwali from our family to your's 🪔🎉.

10/03/2022

Charlotte parents did you know that offers sensory friendly performances. This is from yesterday's sensory friendly performance of Annie, which was a great success!!

"SENSORY-FRIENDLY SHOWS
Children's Theatre of Charlotte offers a sensory-friendly show for most of our Mainstage productions, adjusted for families and friends with children or adults on the autism spectrum or with other sensory sensitivities.
These shows feature:
Softened theatre lighting & sound
Dimmed house lights that remain on
Extra room in the house to move around as needed
Quiet spaces and headphones
Fidgets and other sensory objects"

They provide simplified scripts with pictures from the show for them to follow along, so you can read along or before to prepare them on what to expect during the show or to help them recall the story later to share it with others. They also provide noise cancelling headphones, glasses for light sensitive, weighted stuffed animals and other fidget toys.

Check out for their next sensory friendly performance.
https://ctcharlotte.org/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=300299B0-A01E-4003-B70E-498C86BB166E

08/12/2022

Pausing creates opportunities. Although each one of us can benefit from pausing, the power of pausing when you are working with kids is invaluable. After you give them the required stimulation and nurturing a few times, pause and see them flourish.
When it comes to speech therapy in particular after bombarding kids with target stimuli a few times, pause and see them use what they have been learning from you. Pausing at the right time creates opportunities for kids to show what they have learnt or even teach us something new.

08/04/2022

I get a lot of kids who haven't said their first words yet. When I work them I use simplified/short sentences and phrases to describe what they are doing or playing with. I start with just labeling the objects in their hands car/ball/dog etc and just with one word description of the action eat/walk/open/close/up/down etc. Sometimes it takes one session and sometimes a few sessions I start seeing the kids say these words when I pause and give them an opportunity. When you use repetitive parallel talk with persistence and pause, you will see them use the target words.

06/13/2022

There is nothing more rewarding than an old client wanting to come play with you again. When you're passionate about what you do, it reflects in your work!! I love my job!! My fellow SLPs can relate to this.

Uma Kalani-Gosu MA.CCC.SLP () added a video to their Instagram account: “There is nothing more rewarding than an old client wanting to come play with you again. When you're…”