Speech Therapy Essay

Speech therapy is the treatment of speech, language, and communication disorders. There are many benefits for speech therapy with children who have autism. When people first hear speech therapy they may not think about children who have autism, but instead those who may be deaf or have a speech disorder which is not always the case. Children who have autism can also benefit from speech therapy by being able to build better relationships, help interact with other people, and be able to be a part of society. Many children are diagnosed with a speech or language impairment whether it’s a simple stutter, late development, autism, or even down syndrome. Speech and language disorders is one of the most common developmental issues in both girls

Some of the health benefits included; improved swallowing function, improved vocal quality, fluent speech, and intelligible speech. Not only are there health benefits from speech therapy sessions but, also social benefits. These included school readiness skills, greater self-esteem, being able to be more independent, and better quality of life. The main goal and the biggest benefit of speech therapy is to help improve the child’s communication. Improving communication is more than just helping the children learn how to speak but, help them find other ways to communicate with people through techniques such as, sign language. There are different techniques that are used for those who have autism because there are varying degrees. The speech therapist can mix and match some of the techniques such as; typing, singing songs, using flash cards with pictures and words. The techniques speech therapist use help verbal and non-verbal autistic people communicate. The therapy treatment also includes how many autistic children will start to develop conversational skills, use the correct words, and also how to respond to social situations. When attending speech therapy sessions children will start to improve on understanding social cues. An example would be when trying to identify if a person is uncomfortable or is actually trying to be friendly and talk. It also helps them learn the meaning and context of

Speech therapy may seem like it can promise more than it can actually give. The reason for this is not because of the therapy or the therapists, but more so whether the child is able to develop standard speech. Typically, when this happens speech therapists must find a different way for the child to communicate by using sign language. This can be difficult for some parents to cope with because many parents will make unrealistic expectations for their children. One of the drawbacks that many parents come across is that it’s very time consuming because its recommended for the parents to keep interacting with the children even outside of therapy sessions. The reason that many parents do not interact with their children is because they could be under stress, too busy, or the child is getting older and they don’t feel the need to keep practicing after a certain age. This can be resolved simply by the parents putting some time to the side to interact with their child and it does not have to be anything big, it could be simple things like just talking to them in the car about what they see. Another drawback that some parents and speech therapist come across is that some children do not want to participate. The reason that the children do not want to participate is because they want to do what they want to do. This could be a problem