This review is a bit overdue, but still. And it will be a long one. At 2 we noticed that my daughter wasn't pronouncing all the sounds that my oldest one had no issues with at the same age. When she was 2.5, the speech therapist who did short screenings at preschool confirmed our suspicions - her speech was way behind her peers', but her cognitive development was advanced for her age. The school's therapist recommended to wait another 6 months and see what happens. We decided to seek a second opinion.
Through referral of a friend we came across Sabrina. In fact, she came highly recommended as being very effective and great with kids younger age. We got in contact with Sabrina and had the evaluation done by her. The results of her initial assessment were the same and gave us more details about what the issue is and how to fix it. We loved her manner to work with the child, it was play based and the best part of it - it was in the comfort of our house, which made my daughter feel like it's a game, not a test.
Unfortunately, she wouldn't be covered by our insurance, so we decided to see what the insurance has to offer. Most speech therapists through our insurance told me the wait list would be months long, finally we found one office that would do the evaluation for us. We had them do the evaluation and the experience with them was... very disappointing. Their therapist seemed completely unqualified for the job, it took them over a month to get back to us with the results, and my daughter was terrified of the claustrophobically small offices we were put in. In addition to not talking much, she had a hard time warming up to new people, so the setting and the ambiance, the unpreparedness of the therapist killed any desire in me to get her speech issues fixed. In addition, she couldn't get my daughter to say a word. Towards the end of evaluation, she got 2 words out of her. (When Sabrina did the same evaluation for us at home earlier, my daughter had a great time and talked to Sabrina without hesitation.) That was a very traumatizing experience for us. It also made us appreciate Sabrina so much more. Due to some other family things going on, we decided to wait a few months until life got a little less crazy.
Fast forward a little over a year, my daughter's speech issues did not get corrected on their own. In fact, the gap between her speech and her peers' got even worse. I did some homework and learned that the new sounds she was having issues with wouldn't correct themselves on their own - they would require retraining her tongue muscles. We also had the school's consultant speech therapist come again and confirm that things weren't getting any better and she recommended that we start taking some action.
So I called Sabrina again begging her to take us. Sabrina was very kind, and remembered me right away. Her schedule was completely booked up, but she offered to try to see if one of the other speech therapists working for her would have availability. I was a little unsure, but eager to try someone new come and do another evaluation. This is how we met Kat. And she was the best thing that ever happened to us. She immediately found approach to my daughter, who was still very timid, quiet and shy. Kat was very enthusiastic and just like Sabrina, immediately found a way to get my daughter to trust her and to be willing to talk to her. My daughter is very strong willed, but every single session Kat found ways to get her to work hard, to focus and to continue improving her speech. Kat also has a great feel of when the child can work hard and when they might need a short break. She would also give my daughter speech "homework" to help speed things up. This homework was always challenging, but fun and in play based form, which is vital for a 3 year old.
We have fixed all the sounds that she was behind on for her age, and we were even able to work on some of the sounds that are not required for her age yet (as a preventive measure, knowing how much she struggled with pretty much every single sound). We really enjoyed having Kat work with our daughter and I'm so grateful she helped us so much. Both her and Sabrina are very professional, they know their job inside and out, always very responsive to any questions and requests, are great with young children (I'm pretty sure they are great with older kids as well, I know Kat works a lot with older kids as well). Kat was always very resourceful, answered all of my questions along the way and provided so much additional information for me to understand the process better and to help my daughter progress in between the speech therapy sessions. She definitely played an important role in our life. To anyone looking to find a speech therapist, I highly recommend her, she is a very talented speech therapist. read more