Speech Language Development

Speech-Language Development is a Queens based private practice dedicated to improving speech and language in children, teens and young adults, ages three through 21 who have communication disorders.

We are approved Providers by the Department of Education and are also Network Providers with Magnacare, Multiplan and Cigna. We also work with families who are private pay, and on an out of network basis (please see Insurance Plans/Payment Options page for more details). Most of our clients come to our office, but we can also make arrangements for school based services through the RSA program.

Our fully-equipped office is centrally located in Rego Park New York and is accessible via subway, bus and car. Appointments are scheduled to accommodate a child’s after school schedule, with Sunday and evening appointments available on request.

Speech-Language Development  specializes in developing customized speech disorder therapy treatment plans for each person on program. With individualized therapy sessions, we are able to properly treat apraxia of speech and fluency issues such as stuttering and cluttering of speech. Cluttering is a fluency disorder in which rate of speech is excessively fast or irregular. A person demonstrates little anticipatory struggle and lack of awareness of the rate disturbance. Stuttering is excessive sound, syllable (part-word) repetitions, prolongations and/or blocks.

We work in conjunction with otolaryngologists to facilitate vocal health and hygiene in conditions such as vocal nodules, submucosal cysts, granulomas or ulcers, Reineke’s edema and sulcus vocalis. Additionally, we had had great success in the speech treatment for lateral lisp in children and young adults.

We use highly individualized methods that cater to each person’s special needs and have seen significant improvement in the functional abilities of everyone on our program.

Our Approach to Communication Challenges and Issues

Speech-Language Development uses naturalistic play contexts such as “floor time” to facilitate two-way communication, expression of feelings, intentions and desires through words or play. Further, children initiate and learn pretend play, as well as, hold a conversation for a period of time. We specialize in emphasizing development and usage of grammatical sentence structures, writing conventions, spelling skills and the ability to decode and retain printed and/or written information.

Speech-Language Development  also will assess and facilitate motor system development of oral structures to bring about improvements in speech function. This treatment involves range of motion tasks, resistance and endurance exercises.

At Speech-Language Development we utilize a specialized therapy technique called PROMPT or PROMPTs for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. This technique uses auditory-visual-tactile-kinesthetic input to promote planning, organization and execution of sounds while gaining motor control of jaw, lips and tongue to facilitate speech production and growth in language skills.