Small Talk

Our Articulation and Speech Therapy program strives to help your child produce and shape speech sounds accurately. Children may substitute, omit, add, or change various speech sounds or entire speech sound patterns. For example, your child may produce "ouse" instead of "house" or substitute sounds that are made in the back of the mouth (e.g., "k" and "g") with sounds that are made in the front of the mouth (e.g., "t" and "d").

Apraxia of speech, also known as verbal apraxia or dyspraxia, is a speech disorder in which child has trouble saying what he or she wants to say correctly and consistently. It is a motor speech disorder which a child presents with difficulty coordinating the oral muscles used for speech. It is not due to weakness or paralysis of the speech muscles, but rather voluntary coordination. The severity of apraxia of speech can range from mild to severe.

At Small Talk, we offer individual and small group aural rehabilitation sessions that will help you make the best use of your hearing either through a hearing aid or cochlear implant. We will help you take charge of your communication with others!

Our staff can use ASL to communicate with you if needed. Through specified training and practice, you can acquire new listening skills and habits.

Communication with others will become easier!

Language is composed of both the expressive and receptive parts of speech. Therapy for expressive language focuses on your child's ability to express their thoughts and feeling through communication. Expressive language also includes your child's vocabulary and use of grammar. In contrast, receptive language refers to your child's ability to attend to, process, comprehend, retain, and integrate spoken or signed language. Accordingly, therapy for receptive language will focus on your child's ability to understand spoken or signed language and follow directions.

Auditory Verbal Therapy is a specialized therapy where children who are deaf/hard-of-hearing learn to speak and use their listening skills! Julie Watts has specialized training to enhance the parent/child interaction and develop use of residual hearing to develop strong oral/aural communication skills! Only a few therapists in Jacksonville and St. Augustine have this specialized training.

Our early childhood program focuses on your child's early developmental language skills (e.g., turn-taking, play skills, learning colors and shapes, and letter recognition). This program builds the foundation for the cultivation of children's pre-literacy skills, and help form a firm foundation for school.

"Play" skills are a very important precursor to your child's speech and language development. Children actively improve their socialization skills and learn how to engage in cooperative activities through play. "Play" is an integral part of children's speech and language development because it encourages language development and expands your child's imagination.

During feeding therapy, we work closely with children and their parents to develop a positive feeding relationship in order to foster healthy feeding habits during the early stages of a child's life. Our feeding therapy program employs motor exercises, oral motor techniques and/or procedures to optimize mealtime structure, as well as to explore new food types and textures.

Oral motor exercises may be necessary for weak muscles in the mouth and face to improve speech production. These muscles sometimes need strengthening, need to move farther and have better coordination. Increasing strength and range of motion of oral muscles can help a child increase their intelligibility and articulation, as well as to improve with any eating, feeding, or swallowing problems.

A child with auditory processing disorder presents with difficulty comprehending the information they hear in the same way as others because their ears and brain don't fully coordinate. This adversely affects the way the brain recognizes and interprets sounds. At Small Talk, we have extensive experience with CAPD/APD and offer the Fast ForWord program to help improve skills.

An executive functioning disorder describes difficulties associated with goal setting, carrying out organized steps and modifying a plan to complete a task successfully. These skills are important for learning from past experiences and applying the knowledge in new experiences. Attention, memory, impulse control, organization, planning, and hierarchical thinking problems often described by parents and teachers are the executive function.

A fluency disorder can be described having non-fluent speech. Characteristics of nonfluent speech include repetition of words, sounds, syllables and phrases. Prolongations or stretching of syllables may occur, as well as blocks, or tense pauses. Physical behaviors or reactions may also coexist with stuttering episodes (also known as Secondary Behavior).

We treat both adult and childhood fluency disorders.

Pragmatics is the area of language that embraces the use of language in social contexts (knowing what to say, how to say it, and when to say it, and how to "be" with other people). Children with pragmatic difficulties have great trouble using language socially in ways that are appropriate or typical of children their age. They often do not understand that we take turns to talk, and they will "talk over the top of you" at times, or, at other times respond to what you say with inappropriate silences, or in a voice that is too quiet. They may interrupt excessively and talk irrelevantly or about things the listener may not be interested in.

Autism spectrum disorders and semantic pragmatic disorder are a group of disorders that are characterized by impairments in social interaction, imaginative activity, and verbal and non-verbal communication skills. While the characteristics vary greatly, common attributes of ASD include limited affect, hyper/hypo sensitivity to their environment, repeditive behaviors, and/or inappropriate play skills.