Before First Appointment

During the initial assessment we will ask you a number of questions related to your child's history of development and current skills. We will ask you to fill in our special intake form, so if you prefer to do it earlier, please let us know and we will email you the questionnaire.

Please prepare yourself to answer questions about when your child started to walk, said first words and achieved other major developmental milestones. If your child received any therapy before or has undergone any important assessment, please let us know and if possible, prepare reports. These may include: psychological reports; medical evaluations; physical, speech or/and occupational evaluations; educational tests; teacher notes etc.

Make sure you will be able to give us examples of your child's current speech and communication abilities. If your child is a toddler, you may wish to create his or her vocabulary list for us, describe ways he does (or not) use his speech and let us know what he likes to play with.

You might find it helpful to talk to your child about the evaluation, who is she going to meet etc. several days before the first visit and again on the day of the assessment. Very young child may respond better if you will tell that she is going to meet and play with a teacher (or auntie). Older child should be able to understand that he will see a speech teacher who helps children use their words. Depending on the age (and diagnosis) of your child, we will complete the assessment in different ways, but we want all of the children feel comfortable. Hence, feel free to bring familiar toys with your child. Please choose one or two toys, so the evaluating therapist will have a chance to observe your child playing with one toy for a sustained period of time without moving to another activity. You may want to have some small snack food ready, but please do not offer food to your child without the therapist's consent.

Please schedule the assessment appointment considering your child's naptime and meal schedules, so we could have a chance to interact with your child for at least 30 minutes for a variety of play-based activities. If you have older child, make sure he will have enough rest before the visit, so we could use effectively the entire 60 minutes of your appointment. Try not to bring siblings for the evaluation, as the assessed child should have the entire focus for himself. Be considerable when planning how many adults will accompany the child to the speech therapy office, we want her to have optimal conditions for the evaluation.

Mummy, Daddy, please ...