Prompt therapy in tampa
As a certified PROMPT therapist providing speech therapy services in Tampa, I’ve seen how this innovative approach transforms communication for children with complex needs. Whether you’re exploring early intervention options, seeking help for tongue ties, or investigating orofacial myofunctional therapy, understanding PROMPT therapy could help your child’s speech intelligibility.
What is PROMPT Therapy?
PROMPT (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets) therapy stands apart in the world of speech therapy and early intervention. Unlike traditional speech therapy approaches, PROMPT uses specific tactile cues to guide speech movements. As a Tampa-based speech therapist, I’ve integrated this technique with other early intervention strategies to support children’s speech and oral motor development.
Think of PROMPT therapy like a dance lesson for your child’s speech muscles. Just as a dance instructor gently guides a student’s arms to the correct position, PROMPT therapists use specific touch cues to help your child’s mouth find the right movements for speech. When a young dancer thinks their arms are in the right position, they often need their instructor’s hands-on guidance to truly feel the correct placement. Similarly, your child may think they’re making the right mouth movements for speech, but our tactile cues help them experience exactly how these movements should feel. This physical guidance creates a powerful learning connection in the brain, teaching it to recognize and remember the correct patterns for clear speech production.
The PROMPT Motor Speech Hierarchy: Building Strong Foundations
Understanding the Motor Speech Hierarchy is crucial to PROMPT therapy’s success. Like building a house, we can’t skip straight to the roof – we need to establish a solid foundation first. Here’s how we build speech skills step by step:
1. The Foundation Level
- Breath Support and Voice: Your child needs to have good breath support. You need breath to be able to speak. You also need voice. Can your child vocalize and breathe out when asked? If not, work on that before starting PROMPT.
- Muscle Coordination: While neurologists address underlying tone issues, PROMPT can work on building strength and coordination to help tone issue. If your child has tone, strength, or weakness in oral motor and breath support, this has to be addressed first.
- Structure: We have to look at the structure that cannot be changed through therapy. If your child has a tongue tie, cleft palate, submucous cleft (often overlooked), enlarged adenoids, retracted or protruded tongue, etc. We have to refer out to correct these issues before starting.
For PROMPT to be effective, a child needs to meet some basic prerequisites: they must be able to produce voice (phonate) when asked without behavioral challenges, and follow simple directions consistently. Once these foundations are in place, PROMPT can be one tool for supporting nonverbal children through facial mapping of speech movements, but it’s important to understand its limitations. PROMPT works best for children with oral motor challenges who need help learning correct movement patterns for speech, especially after structural issues have been addressed. However, it’s unlikely to independently create fluent speech in nonverbal children, and it’s not designed to address the pragmatic language challenges often seen in autism, where a child may speak clearly but struggle with purposeful communication. For these situations, traditional language therapy or gestalt language processing approaches may be more appropriate. Every child’s journey is unique, and while I believe in exploring various therapeutic options, it’s crucial to match the right therapy approach with your child’s specific needs.
2. The Jaw Stage – Foundation of all speech
Before we can make clear sounds, we need a stable jaw. Think of your jaw as the foundation of a house – if it’s wobbly, everything built on top will be unstable. This means:
- Working on controlled up/down movements
- Working on bilabials (m, p, b) with appropriate jaw height and lip contact
- Developing jaw stability (no jaw sliding while talking)
- Work on functional words like: pop, mom, dad, bam
3. Lip and Face Control
Only after establishing jaw control do we move to:
- Lip rounding (like in “oo”)
- Lip spreading (like in “ee”)
- Often worked on common words like: me, you, go, no, whee
4. Tongue Movements
Many parents ask about tongue sounds (like ‘t’ and ‘d’) first, but we need those earlier stages before we can work effectively on:
- Tongue elevation, lateralization, protrusion, and retraction
- Tongue sounds like ‘t’, ‘d’, ‘n’, ‘l’
- More complex tongue movements with ‘r’, ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘k’, ‘g’
5. Advanced Speech Skills
Finally, we can work on:
- Putting sounds together smoothly
- Natural speech rhythm
- Voice control and expression
4 Types of PROMPTS
- Parameter Prompts: Basic jaw and face muscle support – gives most support
- Surface Prompts: Single movement guidance – gives moderate support
- Syllable Prompts: Combined movement cues – helps with coarticulation
- Complex Prompts: Multi-movement coordination – helps with harder sounds like ‘r’, ‘ch’, ‘th’
Why Tampa Families Choose PROMPT Therapy
Early intervention is crucial for speech development, especially for children with:
- Low muscle tone
- Tongue ties
- Orofacial myofunctional disorders
- Speech sound disorders
- Motor speech challenges
- Apraxia
How PROMPT Complements Other Speech Therapy Approaches
In our speech and feeding therapy practice, we often combine PROMPT with:
- Orofacial myofunctional therapy techniques
- Early intervention strategies
- Post-tongue tie release therapy
- Motor speech development exercises
PROMPT is not successful unless we look at the underlying issues of their speech sound disorders. If underneath the speech disorder is an underlying weakness, tone, strength, or structure issue, we have to address that first with oral motor and/or referrals to other medical providers.
The PROMPT Speech Therapy Journey
Here’s our systematic approach to speech development:
- Assessment of oral motor functions
- Evaluation of muscle tone and coordination
- Speech Sound Evaluation
- Language Evaluation
- Gathering information about other social and developmental milestones
- Setting goals based on the child’s daily needs (working on functional words like “me” and “you”)
- Development of personalized therapy plans
- Integration with other early intervention services.
Children with low tone
While traditional PROMPT recommends twice-weekly 45-minute sessions, children with low tone often benefit from shorter, daily practice sessions. This flexibility makes PROMPT therapy adaptable to various early intervention needs.
Finding the Right Tampa Speech Therapy Services
When seeking speech therapy in Tampa, consider:
- What level of training they have in PROMPT (Trained, Bridge Trained, Practicum Project Trained, Certified)
- Experience with early intervention
- Understanding of orofacial myofunctional therapy
- Understanding how tone and oral motor can effect speech
- Knowledge of tongue tie impacts
- Integration of various therapy approaches
Remember: Effective communication is our goal, and we’ll use whatever combination of approaches works best for your child.
Contact Us for Tampa Speech Therapy Services
Looking for PROMPT therapy, early intervention, feeding, or orofacial myofunctional therapy in Tampa? Our speech therapy services provide comprehensive support for children with various communication needs.
About the Author: As a certified PROMPT therapist in Tampa, I specialize in early intervention, orofacial myofunctional therapy, feeding, and supporting children with various speech and motor challenges.