Serving Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee
Making AAC Motivational and Fun for Kids and Families: Realistic Expectations, Tips, and Tricks Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems play a vital role in enabling individuals with communication difficulties to express themselves effectively. While AAC can initially seem daunting, especially for children and their families, creating a motivating and enjoyable environment can make the […]
Narrative language refers to the ability to use all parts of language (vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics) together to tell a story. Narrative skills, or storytelling skills, are a complex and important part of communication. These skills begin to develop as early as 2 years of age! We use our narrative language skills several times a day […]
For children who are learning language, play is one of the most impactful activities that you can use to target skills at home. Play is how our children first experience the world around them. They truly are sponges and absorb so much from our interactions with them. There are several strategies that you can use […]
Do you ever feel like you are struggling to get your child to eat even though they are getting feeding therapy from an occupational therapist or speech language pathologist? Here are some easy tips from your APT-Chattanooga feeding therapist: Make a plan for when you will address the child therapeutically during mealtime: Would your feeding […]
Feeding is a complex activity that involves all 8 of our senses that we participate in multiple times a day. When a child exhibits sensory issues and pediatric feeding issues, mealtimes can sometimes problematic. Common reported tactics of pressuring, force feeding, and battles to “take one bite” can eventually take a toll on a problem […]
What the HEP is it? HEP stands for Home Exercise Program. Essentially, this includes the strategies, activities, and/or exercises a therapist recommends you complete at home between therapy sessions. This could include everything from how to respond to a tantrum, specific handwriting tasks, speech sounds to practice, or stretches to complete. Why is it so […]
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a neurological syndrome in which pathways from the brain to produce speech are affected. This may cause the child to be unable to move their lips, tongue, or other articulators in a way that makes the desired speech sound—this does not mean there is weakness in these muscles. This […]
Most parents do not realize how big of a decision it is for their child to use a pacifier. Pacifiers impact not only their child’s speech and language development, but additional areas of development as well. The pacifier is a great tool to use in a variety of situations; however, it is always possible to […]
One thing I learned as both an Occupational Therapist, and more so as a parent of autistic kids, is that they learn differently. They do things, from learning to write, talk, dress, interact with the world and more, on their own terms and on their own timetable. There’s no right or wrong way to do […]
What is AAC and who can benefit? AAC stands for Augmentative and Alternative Communication! This can span from low-tech (choice board, white board, PECS, etc.) to high-tech (eye gaze device, speech generating device, tablets, etc.) communication systems. AAC is another mode of communication your child may prefer in order to express themselves both creatively and […]