Five Ways Private Speech Therapy Can Help
There are many ways to access skilled speech-language therapy, whether that’s through school, hospitals, outpatient clinics, or private practice. In this article, we’ll go through five reasons your child might benefit from working with a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in private practice.
1. Your child didn’t qualify for services with your local school district.
One of the most common reasons families seek out private speech therapy services is that their child didn’t qualify for services through school or the local birth-three agency. In order to qualify for those services, a child must have a severe enough speech-language impairment to meet the district/state requirements. In schools, the child’s impairment must negatively impact the child academically. Sometimes, this can be hard to demonstrate: for example a child who does well academically in school, but has speech sound production errors.
2. Your child receives speech at school, but you’d like additional services to support their communication skills.
Some children who receive speech therapy in school also receive private speech therapy for additional individualized support. Your private speech-language pathologist can collaborate with your child’s school team to ensure continuity of care, which will help your child reach their full potential.
3. You’d like to take an active role in your child’s speech-language therapy sessions.
Private speech therapy is a great way to get involved in your child’s speech therapy. Whether therapy is in-home or clinic based, you’ll get the opportunity to speak with your child’s SLP each session, and you can discuss any questions or concerns that arise during the week. Because of the frequent contact between you and the SLP, your child will receive highly individualized care.
4. Your child has difficulty putting sentences together with the right words in the right order as well as their peers.
Developmental milestones are great guidelines for understanding how your child is developing; however, milestones alone can’t give a diagnosis. For example, the milestone for saying the first word is 12 months, but that doesn’t mean that every typically developing child produces their first word at exactly 12 months. If your child is having more difficulty than their peers with putting grammatical sentences together, a speech-language evaluation can provide clear information and guidance on what your child needs.
5. Your child takes a long time to get through reading and writing work.
Although your child may be able to complete their reading and writing work, it takes longer for them to complete it than their peers. They may also dislike these tasks, even when reading about favorite topics. Private speech therapy can help your child to become a more fluent and confident reader and writer.