Speech Therapy Evaluation and Treatment
Also known as: speech-language therapy, SLP.
What is Speech and Language Therapy?
Speech therapy is a specialized intervention aimed at addressing various speech disorders, as well as improving a child's ability to understand and express language. This therapy, particularly beneficial for those experiencing difficulties in speech and language, is conducted by a trained medical professional known as a speech-language pathologist.
What does a Speech Pathologist do?
Speech-language pathologists work to prevent, assess, diagnose, and treat speech, language, social communication, cognitive-communication, and swallowing disorders.
What happens during the SLP treatment?
Speech-language therapy encompasses the following areas:
- Articulation — Helps with errors in producing individual speech sounds, such as distortions and substitutions.
- Fluency — Addresses difficulties in speaking smoothly. This includes:
- Stuttering: Repeating whole words or parts of words, or pausing awkwardly between words.
- Cluttering: Speaking quickly and merging words together, saying "uh" frequently.
- Voice — Focuses on issues with voice quality, pitch, and loudness that are inappropriate for an individual’s age, gender, cultural background, or location.
- Receptive/Expressive Language —
- Receptive Language: Difficulty understanding spoken or written language.
- Expressive Language: Difficulty sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings orally or in writing.
- Play — Helps children develop skills in problem-solving, turn-taking, and symbolic thinking, which are essential for language development.
- Oral-Motor — Exercises involving the lips, tongue, teeth, and jaw to identify and address oral motor weaknesses.
A formal assessment is conducted to determine the areas of deficit and goal plans are created.
Is any special preparation needed?
A prescription from a medical provider (i.e., your pediatrician or a sub-specialist) is required to initiate scheduling the evaluation.
What are the risk factors?
There are no risk factors related to speech therapy.
Reviewed by: Jamie Tarshis
This page was last updated on: June 13, 2025 09:33 AM
April 14, 2021 – Why is my child not communicating? Why are mealtimes such a battle? These are some of the questions that speech-language therapists are asked when first meeting families seeking therapy for a young child. Sometimes, it is not just a lack of “speech” or difficulties eating that are the focus of our evaluation. Sometimes we are the first to tell parents or caregivers that the child has what we call “red flags for autism.”
Related Podcasts
Welcome back to "For Peds Sake," your go-to podcast for pediatric healthcare discussions. Today we have a very special guest with us. Dr. Keysla Lee, Speech Language Pathologist at Nicklaus Children's Hospital will be diving into communication milestones for children aged 13 to 18 months.