Case Study: Child’s Speech Therapist reports an 80% improvement in fluency over a 2 week break!

Associate Name: Juli Culver

Age/Gender of Client: 5 y.o. female

Background:

Priscilla is a 5 year old female born via unplanned c-section. At age of 2 months she came down with suspected viral meningitis but pathology could not isolate an exact cause. Priscilla did not receive early intervention services. At Priscilla’s second year of preschool her teachers evaluated her for an IEP and she qualified for speech therapy services. She tested as a moderate-severe beginning stutterer.

Priscilla also showed signs of dyslexia, dysgraphia, and auditory processing challenges but due to her young age she was not considered for those diagnoses; only kept ‘on watch’.

Priscilla receives regular MNRI therapy and had started with Brain Gym techniques about a month before the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) intervention.  She did show remarkable progress with her dysgraphia, dyslexia and overall artistic expression with these 2 modalities. The SSP intervention had the biggest change on her fluency of speech.

Intervention:

Priscilla received the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) at her home and she complied with the 5 days, 1 hour per day recommendation. She did this during her school’s winter break. The goal was to improve fluency of speech and reduce overall body anxiety.

A video of the child’s speech prior to the intervention:

A video after her intervention:

Priscilla’s mom was not sure at first that there was significant change, but when Priscilla went back to speech therapy after taking a 2 week break the speech therapists were amazed at her sudden progress. Her teachers were also blown away at the differences in her after the winter break. The positive changes have remained steady and Priscilla continues to improve. She has actually already met her IEP goals less than 3 months after it’s initiation; her speech therapist considers her to be an example of multi-modality early intervention at its finest.

Even the cat seems to have noticed the positive changes in Priscilla. Her family’s pet cat is very anxious and usually hides from the family’s children, especially Priscilla. Since the SSP the cat and Priscilla are making more contact. The cat isn’t 100% convinced yet, but is giving her a try.