Pediatric Speech Therapy Services

We work with babies, toddlers, children, and adolescents

Speech and Language therapy focuses on improving a childs’ ability to communicate both verbally and nonverbally. Speech and Language Pathologists help build communication by providing a fun, nurturing and creative environment.  The speech and language team at CFZ offer specialized diagnostic and language services by completing comprehensive evaluations and treatment for a range of ages and patient needs.

Our Speech and Language Pathologists have over 30 years of cumulative experience diagnosing and treating a variety of disorders.  At Cheshire Fitness Zone, we recognize that your child’s communication skills impact your family as a whole.  Therefore, we work closely with parents and caregivers to address your child’s specific needs across a variety of settings by collaborating on a regular basis and providing specially designed home programs to facilitate progress.

Treatment Areas Our Therapists Address

Click any of the treatment areas below to learn about concerns addressed through speech and language therapy.

Expressive Language Disorder: Difficulty formulating sentences to express information in spoken or written language. This may include use of vocabulary, syntax and morphology.

Receptive Language Disorder: Difficulty comprehending and processing spoken or written language

Pragmatic Disorders:  Difficulty using language in a socially appropriate way

An impairment in any of these areas can cause a child to have difficulty communicating with others.  Language disorders may exist for a variety of reasons including learning disabilities, hearing impairment or auditory processing deficits.  The team at Cheshire Fitness Zone will complete a thorough assessment to determine if a language disorder exists and will work directly with the child and family to develop a treatment plan to address specific skills.

Articulation disorders: A delay in developing sounds due to errors in how the sound is perceived (hearing), movement based weaknesses, or poor interpretation of sensory information in the oral cavity.

As speech and language skills develop, you may notice that your child may produce speech sounds incorrectly. In the early years, many of these errors are considered developmental. However, some speech sound errors are not typical, and can indicate a disorder.  At Cheshire Fitness Zone, our speech therapists will complete an assessment to determine if errors produced are considered developmental based on his or her age. Treatment programs are developed and home programming will be specially designed for practice in the natural environment.

Phonological disorders: Sound errors that occur when the child does not understand the rules for producing sounds and speech patterns within the context of spoken language beyond the developmentally appropriate age. Some examples of these include final consonant deletion (e.g. saying ca/cat) and syllable reduction (e.g. nana/banana).

It is common for phonological patterns to exist during the early years of development.  Many times, these patterns disappear naturally as the child’s language grows. However, if patterns persist, this may indicate a phonological disorder.  The therapists at Cheshire Fitness Zone have experience assessing these error patterns to determine if they are beyond the point of natural remediation.

Apraxia of Speech: Motor speech disorder that impacts the production of sounds, syllables and words. The difficulty stems from the brain, causing difficulties planning and coordinating the movements of the muscles in the absence of muscle weakness or paralysis.

Dysarthria:  motor speech disorder resulting from impaired movement of the muscles used for speech production. This includes the lips, tongue, vocal folds, and/or diaphragm.

Cleft Lip/Palate: Speech and feeding issues that remain after the surgical repair of the tissue in the lip or palate (roof of mouth) that did not form properly in utero, resulting in a physical separation between the lip, palate, or both.

Frontal Lisp or tongue thrust pattern: Protrusion of the tongue beyond the developmentally appropriate age that extends between the anterior teeth on sounds defined as sibilants ( s, z, sh, ch, and  j ).

Ankyloglossis (tongue-tie): Limited tongue movement as a result of  the abnormal shortness of the lingual frenum.

Lateral Lisp: Occurs when air escapes out the sides of the mouth on sibilant sounds instead of the middle creating a slushy sound.

Oral Phase Dysphagia: Difficulty controlling the chewing and movement of food or liquids in the oral area prior to swallowing.  Symptoms may include increased time to chew or swallow, spillage or leakage of food or liquid from the mouth, drooling, and residual of food in the mouth after eating.

There are many reasons why children may experience oral phase dysphagia.  At Cheshire Fitness Zone, we have therapists who are specially trained in treating this area by addressing oral motor function, sensory-motor issues and positioning.  We work closely with the patient and caregivers to develop home programs and provide strategies to make meal time a success.

Stuttering: A disruption in the normal fluency and flow of speech

Stuttering often occurs during childhood when language is developing and will on many occasions, resolve itself.  A normally disfluent child may repeat syllables or words once or twice or use fillers including “uh” or “um”.  In some cases, disfluencies may persist, occurring with increased frequency, and may greatly impact a child’s ability to communicate.  Our therapists have experience determining whether the stuttering is likely to continue.  For those requiring direct treatment, we believe that parent training is an integral part of progress and work to develop individualized treatment programs designed to facilitate fluent speech in everyday situations.

Developmental Delay: occurs when children have not reached developmental milestones within expected time frames.  Learn more about speech and language developmental milestones in our Family Resources section.

The team at Cheshire Fitness Zone can determine whether your child is reaching developmental milestones within expected timeframes and will help to identify the cause for the delay.

Specialized programs offered at Cheshire Fitness Zone

Our therapists are educated in a variety of specialized programs used to facilitate speech and language development.  The following are some of the programs that may be used during treatment sessions:

Take Our Developmental Milestone Quiz!

As parents, we all want to ensure that our children are meeting crucial developmental milestones. Use this tool to see if your child is on the right track.

What Clients Are Saying

Cheshire Fitness Zone has been wonderful. We have worked with many of the therapists for OT and PT and have had excellent experiences with all of them. They were very accommodating to our schedule. And even on a day where my son was not into working they are always able to get him to work. Their front office is very pleasant and are always smiling when we arrive. I have to bring my other son when we come and the therapists are always willing to include both of them on days where it is difficult waiting in the lobby.
Don Hamilton
Cheshire Fitness Zone has tremendously helped not only our two children receiving services, but our entire family. The atmosphere in the clinic is friendly, supportive, and understanding. Their office staff is amazing and accommodates each family’s schedule and needs. Our children receive speech, OT, and PT services. Every one of the therapists they have worked with has been wonderful and our children have made incredible progress. The kids also love going to all of their therapy sessions because the therapists make each and every session fun and exciting. We are so fortunate to have found Cheshire Fitness Zone and recommend it to any family looking for services for their children.
Delia Falcon (Special Education Teacher)
We have been coming to Cheshire Fitness Zone for more than two years. The therapists are friendly, compassionate, and professional. Not only do they do a fabulous job with the therapy, but they also consider the individual behavioral needs for our son. They are caring while pushing him to achieve goals that at times he might feel he can do and he does. Thank you to Craig and the staff for all that you do!
The Smedbergs
Cheshire Fitness Zone has been wonderful. The office staff is very welcoming and informative and the OT that my son sees has a genuine interest in my son’s well-being. He always communicates well with me and makes sure to ease all of my concerns. My son loves coming to Cheshire Fitness Zone!
Anonymous
Cheshire Fitness Zone therapists offer hope, encouragement, and creativity. They deliver on persistence, personal gains, and individual growth because they genuinely care. In spite of working on the steps to tie his shoes for over six months at a different facility, at Cheshire Fitness Zone Erin never lost hope or let him quit. Although he had no idea each week she worked on skills that when put together would tie a shoe. She approached the idea of tying many times only to be met with complete resistance and totally shutting down. Then one day he came to me after his session and said, ‘Hey mom, guess what? I can tie my shoes.’ When I saw the pride in his eyes and the encouragement on Erin’s face I knew he had done it. It was one of the happiest moments of his childhood. What a gift…self-pride and independence.
Stacey Lyn
Cheshire Fitness Zone provides staff at our school that understands the role of related service providers in educational settings, meet the educationally related needs of the students, and communicate well with faculty, staff, and parents. They exhibit a high degree of professionalism and state of the art physical therapy.
Anonymous
We have been coming to Cheshire Fitness Zone for fifteen years. Our son has a motor dyspraxia which causes challenges with posture, upper body strength, and affects his fine motor skills too. After coming consistently every week for 1-2 visits he has surpassed many of his physical challenges. Now as a young man he takes physical challenges like 5k’s and bike challenges with a smile. We are grateful to the many physical therapists he has had over the years. Each of them has encouraged him and pushed him to improve in a gentle, but firm way, and always with a sense of humor. Our son looks forward to coming every week.
The Anthony’s
My girls have been going to Cheshire Fitness Zone since the summer of 2015 and the therapy they receive from their therapist is the best therapy they have ever received. The therapists are the friendliest and nicest group of therapists we have ever met. The girls enjoy going to therapy and I am very happy that we go to Cheshire Fitness Zone.
Anonymous
My son has greatly benefited from OT and PT at Cheshire Fitness Zone. The therapists are so patient and knowledgeable. The facility is also very impressive and fun. We look forward to seeing our son progress as we continue therapy.
Anonymous
I am so happy we found Cheshire Fitness Zone. This is just what my son needs. His school also heard of you guys and said great things. I’m happy to know he is in good hands.
Anonymous

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