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Preschool Services are provided to children who have not yet started
kindergarten. Services are initiated when a child demonstrates a significant delay in communication,
social, oral motor, or feeding skills. Intervention uses direct therapy
techniques with the child while simultaneously developing therapy strategies
that are easily included in daily routines by the family and caregivers of the
child. We strive to continually provide services
that value and use the unique strengths of each child and family served. |
Key Benefits of intervening in the preschool years:
- Preschool intervention values the positive parent-child relationship and
develops an intervention plan that is tailored to the individual child and
family.
- Services are provided in the home, school, daycare, and community.
- Goals are developed with the family to help the child meet milestones
during this critical time of rapid brain growth and development.
When to Seek Help
- Speech/Articulation/Fluency/Voice
- Most children this age are becoming very effective communicators
with periodic errors on some sounds. Seek help if most people
don't understand the majority of what your child says. Seek help
if your child continues to exhibit tongue thrusting, a lisp, other
distracting positioning of the cheeks, lips, or tongue, dysfluency,
poor vocal quality, or if you have concerns or questions about your
child's speech development.
- Language
- Children this age understand most of what you say and can carry on
involved conversations about concrete information. Seek help if your
child is not using sentences, conversing comfortably, asking, or
answering questions. Children this age often still exhibit
grammatical errors when using irregular grammatical structures (e.g.,
"I sleeped in my bed" instead of "I slept in my
bed"). Seek help if your child continues to exhibit
grammatical errors with simple/basic grammatical structure such as
plurals, possessives, regular past tense or word order, or if you have
any concerns or questions about your child's speech
development.
- Social/Play
- Social and Play skill development is critical in the preschool
years. Preschoolers are busy learning by creating, socializing,
building, and playing. Most children this age are pretending and
role playing household scenarios and other parts of their daily
routines (e.g., walking the dog, going to the doctor, a tv show they
have seen). They are building more elaborate structures that
represent something (e.g., a garage, a castle, a bed) and they are
interested in other children. Seek help if you are concerned or
have questions about your child's social or play skills.
- Feeding/Oral Motor
- While severe feeding problems are usually
diagnosed and treated before children reach preschool age, many parents of
children this age become highly concerned about the quality, quantity, and
limited variety of foods their child will eat. Ellyn Satter's "How to
Get Your Kid to Eat, But Not Too Much" is an excellent resource and is
available through the library or most bookstores.Seek help if your child
gags or chokes on food or liquids, stores (pockets) food in their cheeks, under
their tongues, or elsewhere in their mouth, or has trouble chewing and
swallowing or if you are concerned about your child's feeding.
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