Helpful Information About Working with BG Speech Therapy

BG Speech Therapy is currently in-network with and accepts Blue Cross Blue Shield (Indemnity, HMO, and PPO plans) and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care plans. Superbills, or itemized service receipts, are offered for private pay clients who wish to independently seek reimbursement from their insurance company. Please contact BG Speech Therapy for further questions regarding rates and payment.

Step 1: Get in touch to share a bit about what you are looking for! You can contact BG Speech Therapy by filling out and submitting an inquiry form on the website in the Contact Us section, sending an email to info@bgspeechtherapy.com, or calling (781) 281-9755.

Step 2: Complete in-take documents electronically via the online client portal. This allows us to collect and review important background information such as your child's case history as well as insurance information.

Step 3: Schedule and come in for an initial evaluation. This helps to provide a starting point for therapy and design an appropriate treatment plan!

Step 4: Select and schedule a weekly therapy day and time and begin your therapeutic journey!

Every client is unique, and as a result, so is every therapeutic journey. Therefore, we cannot prescribe a set amount of time that someone will take to progress through speech therapy. We can, however, provide you with factors that make speech therapy more effective and, as a result, can decrease the length of one’s therapeutic journey. These include consistently attending your scheduled speech therapy sessions, carryover practice of skills addressed in therapy, as well as communication and collaboration with your speech therapist to ensure that therapeutic strategies and carryover are well suited to your child and your family's lifestyle routines.

Speech therapy sessions take place in BG Speech Therapy's office location at 576 Main Street in Woburn, MA. Virtual teletherapy sessions are offered to clients that are interested in and would benefit from this service delivery model.

Typically, weekly speech therapy sessions are recommended. Some children attend weekly sessions once per week while others may attend sessions two or three times per week. The frequency which sessions are attended per week is dependent on your child's needs.

This is entirely up to you and/or your child! Whatever will allow your child to get the most out of their speech therapy session is the best option! Whether this is you coming into the therapy room and joining in the session, sitting in the room and watching, or relaxing in the waiting room— anything can be accommodated to make your child comfortable and engaged!

Yes! This is common. Many families choose to supplement their child's speech services with private speech therapy. Some families want more services than EI or schools can provide, and certain goal areas are not addressed in school-based services.

The best and most efficient way to find out if your child needs speech therapy is to schedule an evaluation with a Speech-Language Pathologist. Some signs you can look for might include, but are not limited to:

• If your child has not spoken their first words by ages one to two.

• Having difficulty pronouncing some or many sounds or substituting one sound for another.

• Not being able to understand what your child is saying, or perhaps you as the parent/caregiver can understand your child, but unfamiliar listeners struggle to.

• Using incorrect grammar in their language.

• If your child’s language has regressed.

• If your child becomes frustrated because they cannot say what they want to, or they are not understood by others.

• Avoiding communication or using different words that do not contain sounds that they struggle with (for example, someone who stutters or has challenges with their speech sound production/articulation may avoid words that contain difficult or problematic sounds for them).

• Having difficulty with following directions.

• Having trouble playing with or socializing with peers.

• Speaking in repetitive or scripted chunks of language, as opposed to using novel, self-generated productions.

• Being limited in one’s academic, social, or vocational life because of their communication difficulties.

Strengths-based therapy is an approach to delivering speech therapy that involves meeting your child where they are and capitalizing on their strengths in order to help them learn and progress, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach. Play-/interest-based therapy approaches use play and a child's interests as a mechanism to work on therapeutic targets. This tends to make therapy more fun but also more meaningful for each individual child.

Neurodiversity-affirming therapy is built upon the idea that people have differences in their abilities and the way that they exist in and interact with the world. This approach views these differences not as deficits that need to be fixed, but rather as natural ways of being that are considered to be different neurotypes. Some different neurotypes that this approach celebrates and supports include, but are not limited to, Autism, ADHD, and dyslexia.

The vast majority of autistic children are GLPs, but not all GLPs are autistic. If your child is autistic, they are very likely a GLP. Here are some other signs that your child could be a GLP:

• If your child repeats the same phrases in the same tone immediately after hearing something ("immediate echolalia") and/or later on ("delayed echolalia") in situations that may seem to make no sense or not be relevant. (They likely are meaningful to your child and may require some investigative work to figure out the meaning behind them!)

• If your child speaks using long strings of unintelligible speech. These may actually be long gestalts from a favorite movie, book, or song.

• If your child likes to watch the same movies or media and read the same books over and over again. Some children will also watch the same brief clips from movies or YouTube videos over and over again. They likely will repeat lines from these as well.

• If your child likes to dramatically act out scenes, use language that is rich in intonation and emotion, and use facial expressions that are exaggerated and theatric.

• If your child talks in the 3rd person (i.e. refers to themself using their own name rather than pronouns - "That's Johnny's toy" vs "That's my toy").

• If your child speaks using only one word at a time or rotely labels items.

• If your child does not or has difficulty answering questions and/or engaging in back-and-forth conversations.

• Is non-speaking but hums rhythmically or makes the same types of sounds to express emotions.