Clients sometimes ask me why they see our speech therapists working in all areas of our building, including the gym.
Our concept of how to deliver speech and language therapy is a bit different from what you’ll find at other places. In many places, the speech therapists, and often even the occupational therapists, will have a room. All their therapy is done in that room. They might have one small gym space, but typically they are confined to one room.
Our Gyms
That is not how we do therapy here! We have many friends with sensory challenges, so you might see a speech-language pathologist working on language inside a swing, or going down a scooter board ramp. I often see them up on the climbing structures. They are trying to meet the self-regulatory and sensory needs of your child so that they can work on language skills.
Feeding Room
You might also see a speech-language pathologist in our feeding room. Our OTs also do feeding therapy, but many of our speech-language therapists are trained in feeding. Our feeding room has a pantry and a refrigerator with a variety of feeding items. We order food every week so that it’s here for you, and you don’t have to worry about food. We know that it can be stressful to get the type of items you want to use for feeding therapy right now. We even have a Magic Bullet for smoothies! This room also holds chewies and brushes, items that we use for oral motor skills.
The Apartment
Another area you might see a speech-language pathologist is in our apartment. Many of our SLPs are working on function, facilitating language or functional communication. In the apartment, they might do a cooking activity, fold clothes, or play a game at the table. This is a great place to elicit language in our young adults!
The Pool In Our Allen Location
How about our pool room? Yes, you might even find our SLPs doing treatment in the pool! You would not believe the amount of language that the water facilitates! This does not mean that our SLPs will necessarily be in the pool, but they might be standing on the sidelines and having a conversation, or working on skills in the water.
Outside
Yet another area we facilitate language is outdoors in play. We have all of our play equipment out here, and the SLP might ask the client what they want to do, how does it feel? We also have our core boards out here to help the kids who are out here on an assisted language device. We have both a Proloquo board and a LAMP board to help those students communicate on the playground.
Treatment Rooms
Finally, we do treatment in treatment rooms! We have a few different rooms that our speech therapists like to use. We have a comfortable testing room that is a great place for facilitating social skills and Telehealth. Typically our speech therapists cycle back to the rooms after they’ve done activities your child needs to do so that they can focus and work specifically on language-based activities. Another one of our speech rooms has a little kitchen.
Recap
Language doesn’t only happen in a room. It happens everywhere! You communicate all over the world, at home, out in the community. Our speech therapists are flexible enough to try to meet all those different environments for your kiddos because we want to make sure they’re generalizing those skills everywhere.
Your Next Step
If you are reading this, please take a moment to check out the video on our Facebook or YouTube page. You’ll get to see what each of these different areas looks like! If you have any questions or want to know more about our services, give us a call!
