Consider These Benefits of Early Speech Therapy

You listen in wonder as your child begins to form their first sounds and words, and you look forward to a new way of communicating. You realize, however, that they might struggling with verbal communication or seem farther behind other toddlers their age, and you’re worried.

At Celebrations Speech Group, we specialize in speech therapy for children and understand early intervention’s many benefits. This quick attention can not only help your child communicate better, but it can also help prevent behavioral issues from arising.

Here’s a look at a few of the many benefits of early speech therapy for your child.

Where speech therapy can help

Before we get into the reasons why early intervention for speech disorders is key, let’s take a look at the speech disorders that we can treat through speech therapy, which include:

• Fluency disorders — such as stuttering
• Apraxia of speech — the brain knows what it wants to say, but the words can’t get out
• Articulation disorders — problems with certain word sounds
• Resonance disorders — voice quality
• Receptive disorders — issues with how your child receives messages
• Expressive disorders — issues with how your child speaks, writes, or gestures

This list is by no means comprehensive, and the purpose of speech therapy is to address any issues preventing your child from communicating well with the world around them.

The benefits of early intervention

Early intervention for most issues, whether it’s a speech disorder or a medical problem, is always a good idea as we’re able to address the problem during the earliest stages, which can prevent larger issues down the road.

Children’s brains develop very rapidly until age 5, at which point 90% of development is complete. When we talk about development, we’re referring to the connections (synapses) that the cells in your child’s brain are forming. To put some numbers to this, one million neural connections form every second.

As you might imagine, intervening with speech therapy during this process can help your child’s brain form healthier neural connections, providing them with lifelong results.

Another great result of early speech therapy is that we can work on communication skills in a way that can prevent future behavioral and learning issues once your child starts going to school. Verbal communication is only one aspect of our speech therapy as we also work on other skills, such as expression.

When children learn to express themselves, including their needs and wants, they are less prone to frustration and mental health issues like anxiety.

As well, many toddlers with untreated speech disorders can develop behavioral issues as a way to compensate. Early speech therapy can prevent behavioral issues from developing as we work on healthier and more productive communication methods. In fact, we conduct our speech therapy sessions under the guise of “play,” which means we can improve your child’s ability to interact in a fun and stress-free way.

As most of our clients would agree, early speech therapy can pave the way forward for a bright and happy youth.

If you’d like to learn more about early intervention speech therapy, please contact one of our locations in Brentwood, Stockton, or Elk Grove, California, to set up a consultation.