Rehabilitation Specialists, Inc.

I recently told my husband about our new blog and how my goal was to get information out to the public on various topics involving speech therapy. I asked him what he thinks the most important thing parents should know about speech therapy as he is someone who knows more about my profession than most (if you don’t, check out our other blog post “What Is An SLP?”). He told me that when we are together, the most asked question he hears other people ask is, “My child can’t say X sound. Should they have that by now?” Thus, here we are with this week’s post! So, let’s make this information easy to understand and to the point. The following chart is from www.talkingchild.com and is adapted from the two leading research articles on speech sound development for children by sex and age: I also attached this information from www.asha.org , which shows what children should be doing in regards to sounds since birth: The chart below shows the age range for each speech sound. By ...

Hello there again! With the beginning of the school year already upon us, I wanted to introduce our 5 Questions With series to you. This will be a series where we will be posting an interview with a specialist in the Speech-Language Pathology field to find out more about their specialty and to get 5 answers to important questions for you. I am very excited for our first guest who has grown immensely in the field of voice therapy since graduating from Duquesne University, where Julie and I both went for undergraduate and graduate studies. He worked at Oregon Health and Sciences University in their Northwest Clinic for Voice & Swallowing for his clinical fellowship year then moved back to Pittsburgh to work at Straka and McQuone, Inc. as their on-staff speech pathologist for voice and swallowing disorders. He is currently studying for his doctorate degree and working as a Research Assistant at Michigan State University. I am very proud to introduce David Ford, our friend, and a spec...

I think one of the hardest things about being a parent is the constant feeling like someone is judging you. Too much sugar in your kid’s diet. Not enough time with them. Too much time with them. Not enough time spent in the woods. Too much screen time. Most of these boil down to parenting style with no good or bad decisions. That last one, though, screen time, is one that a lot of people struggle with at a visceral level. What you need to understand, however, is why professionals are recommending limiting screen time.  First, let’s talk about what constitutes as “screen time.” This includes TV, tablet games and videos, Netflix and other streaming services on devices, movies, Skype and other video chatting, and even those few respite moments of watching YouTube in the grocery store check out line (read: I’m a mom and I understand that need for Baby Shark).   The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has put out new recommendations on media and how infants, toddlers, and children...

When I was in college, a big ice-breaker amongst the academic crowd in social situations was, “What is your major?” Being young and having the people in my class understanding my lingo, I typically answered, “SLP” which was, 90% of the time, quickly followed up with, “Oh. What is that?” Whether you have heard the terms Speech Therapist, Speech Teacher, Communication Therapist, or another term, our technical title and degree is that of a Speech and Language Pathologist, commonly abbreviated SLP. An SLP is a highly-qualified professional who works to evaluate and treat individuals of all ages to work on speech skills, language skills, social skills, fluency/stuttering, voice, alternative and assistive communication pathways, swallowing and feeding skills, and deafness/hearing rehabilitation. As one of my professors in grad school liked to say, “We deal with the lungs up.” Many times, a person in a social setting will tell me, “My brother had speech therapy as a kid! I couldn’t say my ...

As you can see from the title, Rehab Specialists will be hosting a blog where we will be posting information about speech and language therapy every Monday. This will generally serve to get information out to the public on what we do as Speech-Language Pathologists and how speech therapy can help you or your loved ones. We would also like to build this blog to serve as a space where caretakers can connect and where you can get your questions answered by professionals. The therapists in this office work with all populations in most settings within the Pittsburgh area. We hope to cover a variety of issues for professionals, parents, and clients and talk about disorders which may affect both children and adults. Please check back often and engage in these talks so we get a sense of what the people reading this blog may be interested in learning. The two main therapists who will be contributing to this blog include Kathleen Dames and Julie Stroup. Kathleen mainly works with pediatric p...