Discover 4 tips for navigating speech therapy with middle and high school students from one of eLuma's own SLPs.
Online Speech Therapy for Fluency Disorders
A child’s ability to share their thoughts and feelings begins with the confidence to express themselves.
Fluency Disorders & eLuma
eLuma offers unparalleled online speech therapy solutions for treating Fluency Disorders. We know that the key to helping these students is to first see and then unlock their incredible potential, but it all starts with their ability to communicate. Our speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can provide all of the same required services live and online, through a fully-secure, HIPAA-compliant platform, as they can in person — and can do so with a high degree of effectiveness, efficiency and flexibility. We love working with these kids and find great satisfaction in seeing them progress and succeed.
What are Fluency Disorders?
Fluency is related to the smoothness, rate, and rhythm of speech. While some disfluencies in speech are typical, a student with a fluency disorder will exhibit disfluencies that have a significant negative impact on their communication and are often atypical in nature. Atypical disfluencies are generally accompanied by increased duration, effort, and/or tension.
Examples of typical disfluencies (only deemed a fluency disorder if excessive):
Intentional pausing
Interjections (word fillers, such as “um” or “like”)
Whole-word or phrase repetitions/revisions
Examples of atypical disfluencies:
Partial word, sound, or syllable repetitions
Blocks (unintentional periods of silence when attempting to speak)
Prolongations of sounds
Stuttering
- Stuttering is the most common fluency disorder. It is characterized by disruptions in the flow of speech, including repetitions, prolonged sounds, interjections, revisions, and blocks. The rhythm or rate of speech may also be affected. Secondary behaviors, such as physical tension or avoidance of certain sounds, words, or speaking situations may also be present.
Cluttering
- Cluttering is a fluency disorder that results in a rapid or irregular speech rate. Cluttered speech is often characterized by omission of word endings, deletion or simplification of syllables, and/or grammatically-inappropriate pausing in sentences.
Fluency disorders can not only impact a student’s ability to be clearly understood, but may also result in stress, frustration, or feelings of embarrassment. Negative associations with speaking may cause students to avoid speaking situations and social interaction.
Treating Fluency Disorders
eLuma’s treatment for Fluency Disorders focuses on capitalizing on the individual’s strengths, improving functional skills, and creating support systems to help compensate for deficits. The eLuma online speech therapy team and the individual Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) play an important role in helping the students progress. They work in collaboration with the student’s interdisciplinary team, which may include: the special education administrators, the general education teacher, special education teacher, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and/or mental health professional.
Get a Free Consultation
If you have questions about online school based speech therapy and how it works, we invite you to check out our Why Online Therapy and How Online Therapy Works pages to learn more about how effective, affordable, and popular it really is.
If you want to learn more about how eLuma’s online speech therapy services can help your school district, we’re happy to provide a free consultation to talk through your specific needs.
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