Join us as we dive into teen speech development. In this branch of our clinic’s services, we provide therapy sessions that address:
These are common areas that call for attention in speech therapy for teenagers. Your teen may exhibit struggles in one or more of these areas and if so, please give us a call.
We typically see teenagers in our clinic for speech impairment therapy. This tends to occur following a sports-related concussion or brain injury, or in cognitively delayed or impaired kids. Along with dysphasia treatment involving language, dysphagia treatment involving challenges with swallowing or eating can also be addressed in teens, though is not so common in this age group.
The speech therapy approaches with teens are not that different from those of adult speech therapy or with an adolescent speech therapist. Teen therapy differs from adult speech therapy in Forney because the teen’s mind is still growing and developing, so the speech therapy works alongside and in support of the neurological developmental process. This makes it a bit easier to work with teens since their brains are still growing and developing. However, similar approaches as with speech therapy for adults are generally undertaken with teens.
The same applies with adult stuttering therapy versus stuttering therapy for teens – it’s essentially the same set of strategies, but the teen is expected to respond more quickly and easily to the treatment modalities.
However, the underlying need for a speech therapist for adults tends to differ from speech therapy needs for teenagers, as adult speech development tends to follow an adverse medical event such as a stroke that affected the brain’s language center. Nevertheless, a speech therapist for adults is also equipped to provide speech therapy to teenagers.
At Precision Speech Therapy, we provide speech therapy services to individuals of all ages, resulting from all sorts of underlying causes. We tend to focus our service delivery as adult speech therapists and children’s speech therapists, because that’s where most of the demand lies. But we will happily welcome any teen who needs our help for any reason.
If your teen is showing difficulty with articulation, challenges in expressing thoughts, or struggles with social communication, it’s better to err on the side of caution and make an appointment for an assessment.
Stuttering can be common in teenage years. This is technically called a fluency disorder. Our specialists address fluency disorders, helping teens overcome speech impediments and build confidence as they develop greater ability to communicate effectively.
Difficulty understanding or expressing language can affect teenagers, becoming more apparent as the child grows. We can work together to overcome these challenges.
If your child experiences speech disorders, fluency disorders, language disorders, or social skill challenges as noted above, it may be time to have an assessment. Make an appointment for your teenager in our clinic, and we’ll do a full assessment and see what we can do. Language learning and its appropriate usage is actually highly complex and involves mastery of several systems at once. The nuances of American speech bring a wide range of demands to speech and language, and some of us need a little help as we work to master all of that.
In our first session together, we will perform a full assessment and diagnosis, and determine a tailored course of action to correct the issue.
In our second session together, the real work begins. For approximately 30-45 minutes, your child will work with an expert in speech therapy for teenagers, targeting the speech issues of concern. In our therapy sessions we will do exercises, drills, and other activities designed to address the underlying matters. All recommendations and treatments are scientifically supported and evidence-based techniques and strategies. We will then end the session, provide homework, and ask the family to participate in the teen’s home practice. Your teen will need home practice to reinforce what we’ve been working on in our therapy sessions and help your child progress.
We’ll meet once or twice a week, depending on your teen’s needs and rate of progress through the therapy, for as long as it takes to rectify the issue. Sometimes this is as little as about 6 weeks, while other times we need to work together for about a year or even a bit longer.