Blog

Do my benefits cover speech therapy?

In my experience, most people who receive supplementary benefits through their employer(s) have coverage for Speech-Language Pathology. Two types of coverage exist. In some cases, Speech-Language Pathology services are covered under the umbrella heading of “Licensed” and/or “Registered” health care practitioner. In our Ontario, “Speech-Language Pathologist” is a protected title that can be held only

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Don’t “wait & see”

In my practice, both in the private and public sectors, I have come across an alarming number of parents/caregivers who have elected to wait to see if their child’s language development will eventually “catch up” on its own. They do this for a variety of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is because someone

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If your Spidey Sense is tingling…

There are several things that a primary healthcare professional does to examine a child’s development, in addition to playing/interacting with the child. Parents are asked questions about broad areas of development. These areas are usually communication, thinking/problem-solving, social skills, and movement/co-ordination of small and large parts of the body. Asking about these areas is part of

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A little bit about stuttering.

“Stuttering” is a disruption in the fluency – or smoothness – of speech. The word “stammering” is used in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world to describe the same behaviours. The technical term for it is dysfluency. Dysfluency may appear in several forms (listed below). Each can occur on its own or

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What is a language disorder?

Simply put, a language disorder is a problem in the use or understanding of language in any modality. A “modality” is the way in which language is communicated, whether spoken, signed, written, etc. A language disorder can affect anybody from any age-group. It can be present in the 5 year-old who’s sentence grammar is off

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How ear infections can affect language development

Infants and toddlers get sick often. It happens, and it is generally a good thing that it does, as their little bodies cope and build immunity.  Having ear infections often results from fluid build-up in the middle ears (the name of this infection is “otitis media”). The middle ear is the little cavern just inside

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