Our son, Joaquin, has global development delays - at 3 years old he currently cannot stand unassisted, is learning to crawl and cannot safely get out of a chair. Joaquin is also non-verbal. When we scheduled our first appointment with an SLP, Kara atKids Communicate, about 6 months ago, we were so excited and filled with HIGH hopes! Joaquin was close to turning 3 and although he had some great sounds going on, there was no "ma-ma" or "da-da". The thought of getting started with a speech therapist meant that, just maybe, he'd be communicating soon! We didn’t know how much work we had ahead of us.
Right away, within the first 10 minutes of our first appointment, Kara dropped a bomb on us.
"This weekend was this handsome young man's Communion and 11th birthday. It was an honor to be apart of his very special day. What an extraordinary celebration of milestones!!!
I know it meant the world to everyone is his life that he was able to reply “Amen” for his ceremony.
He was also able to retract his lips to smile in pictures and blow out his own candles.
All important prerequisites for building proper speech development.
He has made so much progress in the past year from non-verbal to verbal one word productions. Really super proud of him for working so very hard to learn how to talk and his family for always following through on recommendations.
Happy Birthday JT, hope all your wishes come true this year!!!!!
Big thank you to TalkTools Therapy, Dr. Kaufman, Forbrain, Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, S'cool Moves, Ages & Stages, The Lovass Center for Behavior Intervention and Speech Works by Elissa, LLC. The combination of these tools and behavioral approaches really has made an extraordinary difference in his and his families life!!! Also, I want to sincerely thank his amazing team who supports him with his goals everyday! Team work makes the dream work!
Looking forward to even more progress this upcoming year."
~Elissa R. Mandel, CCC-SLP
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Elissa R. Mandel, CCC-SLP is a TalkTools-trained therapist and the founder and executive director of Speech Works by Elissa, LLC in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has an overwhelming passion and desire to improve the quality and availability of speech-language-hearing services both in Las Vegas, across the nation and around the world. She currently services clients in Nevada, Florida and internationally and has over 20 years experience in the field of Speech and Language Pathology.
