Blue Jellyfish Speech & Language Services

Our lives have been profoundly changed for the better upon meeting and working with Anne. I got the distinct sense that she truly cared about children and was passionate about working with them. She addressed all of my concerns and pointed us in the right direction to optimize services our daughter would need. She worked with the recommendations provided by our developmental pediatrician and created a curriculum to improve our daughter's speech delay that each member of the household could perform. In just 3 months time, our daughter's speech dramatically improved and she became much more vocal and verbally interactive. Now, just barely 6 months after our first meeting with Annie, our daughter won't stop talking! We are forever grateful to Annie for unlocking the key to our daughter's speech. We are confident that as we continue to utilize the tools she's given us, our daughter's speech delay will be a distant memory in the near future!

My daughter, Beth, started working with Annie when she was 7 years old. Beth was diagnosed with a speech delay at 1.5 years old and apraxia around 3 years of age. The first positive thing I noted about Annie was that she was one of the few therapists who concentrated in apraxia who was very flexible with session times. With other speech therapists concentrating in apraxia, they had one spot available which caused me to have to pull Beth out of school early. Annie was fairly flexible with the time! Second, Annie recognized immediately the areas that Bethany still required concentration. Annie went the extra level of collaborating with Beth's school therapist to work as a cohesive unit. She worked with Bethany 45 minutes a week and weekly gave her homework to stress those concepts. Beth quickly progressed to overcome her issues which was a pleasant surprise! However, the biggest issue that Annie recognized (which Beth's other speech therapists had never identified) was that Beth could not read her vowels properly. Due to this issue, Beth would barely ever try to sound out words and was greatly falling behind her peers in the books she could read. Annie developed phrases and techniques to help Beth learn when a vowel "says its name" (long vowel sound) versus short vowel sound. She taught Beth the concept of when one vowel "kicks" another vowel and "makes it says its name." Shortly after Beth started working on her vowels, she grew in her abilities and confidence and was able to read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series in 2nd grade. In third grade, Bethany is now able to read the Harry Potter books, which she is thrilled about! Annie's ability to identify Beth's required areas of concentration and to make a thorough plan to overcome the issues was amazing! I cannot recommend Annie Hasting enough as a speech therapist, especially for children with Apraxia!