About Mary-Jane
My name is Mary-Jane Slingerland and I have worked as a certified Speech-Language Pathologist for over 29 years with children as young as 6 months. My training as an Early Childhood and Primary-Junior Educator, and Speech-Language Pathologist has provided me with the developmental knowledge base and experience to work with children presenting with communication difficulty. I also have extensive experience working with toddler to adult aged individuals with global developmental delays, but presently work mainly with children under the age of 5 years. I am sole owner of my private practice.
My Approach to Working with Young Children
I believe communication, language and speech learning needs to be experienced, so I provide a hands on, play-based approach to all my sessions. Shared activities support early brain connectivity which is imperative for speech and language learning. I also feel very strongly that parents and caregivers need support so I do a great deal of coaching with family members, including grandparents, during my assessment and follow up sessions.
Areas of Clinical Interest and Experience include:
My Approach to Working with Young Children
I believe communication, language and speech learning needs to be experienced, so I provide a hands on, play-based approach to all my sessions. Shared activities support early brain connectivity which is imperative for speech and language learning. I also feel very strongly that parents and caregivers need support so I do a great deal of coaching with family members, including grandparents, during my assessment and follow up sessions.
Areas of Clinical Interest and Experience include:
- Child Articulation and Phonological delays (Speech sound production delays)
- Childhood Apraxia of Speech (Motor Sequencing of sounds to form words is impaired)
- Child Receptive Language Delays (auditory processing of language, understanding of words and sentences may be impaired)
- Child Expressive Language Delays (narrative/discourse skills [organization of thoughts into sentences to retell a past event or experience], vocabulary [naming skills], grammar or syntax may be impaired)
- Social Language Delays (responding to eye contact,taking conversational turns,tone of voice,topic maintenance, reading body language and emotion, appropriate body proximity to the listener)