Welcome!
Honey Bloom Speech Therapy
Provides speech therapy, feeding therapy, and myofunctional therapy to children and adult populations in the Houston area.
Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Receptive Language
- Expressive Language
- Tongue Thrust
Tethered Oral Tissues
Resting Oral Posture
Thumb/Finger Sucking
Swallowing
- Childhood
Apraxia of Speech
In order for speech to occur, messages need to go from your brain to your mouth. These messages tell the muscles how and when to move to make sounds. When a child has apraxia of speech, the messages do not get through correctly. The child might not be able to move their lips or tongue in the right ways, even though their muscles are not weak. Sometimes, the child might not be able to say much at all.
Some Signs and Symptoms
- Does not always say words the same way every time
- Tends to put the stress on the wrong syllable or word
- Distorts or changes sounds
Can say shorter words more clearly than longer words.
- Difficulty with fine motor skills
- Delayed language
- Problems with reading, spelling, and writing.
- Who is a late talker?
Late Talkers
Risk factors may include the following
A “Late Talker” is a toddler (between 18-30 months) who has good understanding of language, typically developing play skills, motor skills, thinking skills, and social skills, but has a limited spoken vocabulary for his or her age. The difficulty late talking children have is specifically with spoken or expressive language. This group of children can be very puzzling because they have all of the building blocks for spoken language, yet they don’t talk or talk very little.
The following guidelines can help you determine if your child’s vocabulary is appropriate for his or her age. If your child has not yet reached these milestones, he or she should be seen by a speech-language pathologist:
18 month olds should use least 20 words, including different types of words, such as nouns (“baby”, “cookie”), verbs (“eat”, “go”), prepositions (“up”, “down”), adjectives (“hot”, “sleepy”), and social words (“hi”, “bye”).
24 month olds should use at least 100 words and combine 2 words together. These word combinations should be generated by the child, and not be combinations that are “memorized chunks” of language, such as “thank you”, “bye bye”, “all gone”, or “What’s that?”. Examples of true word combinations would be “doggie gone”, “eat cookie”, or “dirty hands”.
Orofacial Myology
Orofacial Myofunctional Disorder
What is an OMD?
Orofacial myofunctional disorder refers to improper function of the facial muscles, tongue and mouth. OMDs may directly or indirectly affect facial growth and development, chewing, swallowing, speech articulation, occlusion, oral hygiene, stability of orthodontic treatment, facial esthetics and more. Several factors can contribute to OMDs, one being inherited muscle patterns. Another is airway obstruction.
Signs & Symptoms
Symptoms of OMDs
Symptoms of orofacial myofunctional disorders can be very obvious or happen over a period of time and be unclear. Certain habits or conditions can interfere with proper actions of orofacial muscles causing OMD. These muscles include cheeks, jaw, lips and tongue. When these muscles function incorrectly due to habits or conditions, it can lead to improper development. This atypical development causes the muscles to have incorrect adaptations and not work in balance which can cause a variety of problems.
Do you suffer from any of the following?
- Mouth Breathing
- Orthodontic Relapse
- Chronic Tension
- Mood Disorders
- Jaw Pain
- Toxic Oral Habits
- Tongue Thrust
Snoring
- Chronic Headaches
Grinding
Swallowing Difficulty
Poor Posture
Sleep Apnea
Tongue-Tie
Speech Problems
- Our Program
Orofacial Myofunctional Program
Goals of the Program
Our Program is appropriate for children, teens and adults. Program goals are individualized and are meant to create new healthy oral habits. The benefit of healthy habits can include nasal breathing, a proper swallow pattern, favorable resting tongue position and preserving orthodontic results from this program.
This program is comprehensive and covers a variety of oral problems. This program helps reverse damaging habits, such as tongue thrust. This program can last from six months to a year. The objective of this program is to eliminate bad habits, demonstrate therapeutic facial exercises, develop proper lip seal and tongue placement and teach chewing and swallowing patterns to reinforce good habits. These goals will help the structures in the mouth stay in balance and habitualizing the learned behaviors is most important for long term success.
Let’s Change Things
We are dedicated individuals who value the profession we have chosen. We understand that you are entrusting us with your child’s cognitive linguistic, social emotional and physical sensory development. We are determined to provide the best intervention we are capable of each day to every child and family. We will go above and beyond to be a supportive partner in your child’s progress.
“Brenda is fabulous. She goes the extra-mile to make sure you understand how you are progressing and will communicate with you to keep you fully informed.”