When a person has difficulty with self-expression (expressive language), understanding others (receptive language) in spoken or written form. After assessment, intervention can occur at levels of form, content, or and or appropriate usage. Fluency disorders including stuttering are also types of language disorders.
When an individual struggles with the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication, these fall under social communication disorders. These kinds of disorders include weakness in communicating for social purposes, adapting speech for audience and environment, and following conventions for conversation and story-telling. These are language-cognitive concerns. People with autism spectrum disorder and those with other conditions such as traumatic brain injury will have social communication disorders.
Trouble with attention, memory, planning, problem-solving, and organizing thoughts fall into cognitive-communication disorders. They tend to occur following a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or dementia, or they may be congenital.
Adults sometimes endure throat and swallowing impairments conjoined with laryngeal (throat) cancer and oral cancers, which bring difficulties with chewing, swallowing, and communicating. Many may be currently undergoing chemo and/or radiation treatments and using a feeding tube. Speech therapy during this time is crucial to maintain swallowing function and get off of the feeding tube as soon as possible. Patients who have undergone total or partial laryngectomy, hemiglossectomy, or surgical facial revisions may also benefit from speech therapy.
When children need help with better eating and swallowing, it’s known as feeding therapy. When adults need the same kind of intervention, it’s called dysphagia.
Young children sometimes struggle with getting their food down as their palate develops. Many kids are hypersensitive, particularly to varied textures – they like one kind of texture, and gag on everything else. Parents may also notice increased drooling, food falling from their kids’ mouths, or very picky eaters. In adults, dysphagia presents as starting to notice more coughing and choking while eating or the sensation that food is getting stuck. In extreme cases, the adult is forced to use a feeding tube and would like to return to eating again.
Most people don’t realize that language pathologists also generally offer swallowing and dysphagia therapy in their speech therapy clinics. We do. And because this service is so fundamental to life itself – learning to swallow your food – we particularly enjoy this kind of work.
If you or a loved one is experiencing difficulty getting their food down, regardless of age, we would love to provide an assessment and see if we can help the patient with their swallow disorder. Bring them in!
Children
They may have feeding aversions, difficulty transitioning to solids, or general failure to thrive. A lot of these wee ones started life on the outside in an incubator, the truest kind of gift from above, and they’re not eating so great. When they become toddlers around the age of 2, we see them for language development. There’s a set of developmental milestones for 2-year-olds, so we see the kids that aren’t hitting them in time. School-aged kids present with errors in articulation and pronunciation. This translates to phonological impairments, which means difficulty reading, spelling, and general language development. They may also need help with phonology of English’s more difficult letters. We help teens with communication skills, and provide support when academic performance appears to have causes in cognitive functioning.
Adults
We also work with people with swallowing issues. Perhaps they’re choking more than before or spilling more food, or perhaps they’re on a feeding tube and undergoing chemo-radiation therapy for laryngeal cancer. Whatever the underlying cause, we love to work with people to get their nutrition into their bodies.
