Each person has different strengths and weaknesses. Part of the speech language pathologist job is to help each person understand and use their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. Discovering each person’s strengths is like uncovering pearls. The goal is to learn how to use an individuals strength to decrease or navigate around their speech language deficit. It’s like putting a puzzle together. No two people are exactly alike. One client’s strength may be his ability to remember details and rules, another strength may be her ability to draw, while another’s strength might be to remember and tell stories. Speech-language therapy helps individuals understand their strengths which is the key to managing weaknesses.
Can a person’s talent for drawing pictures be used to take notes? Increase comprehension? tell a story? Is telling a story the way to remember new material? For someone who likes rules, spelling rules, grammar rules, and reading rules there are so many rules to learn! However the therapist must be careful with people who are rule based because the English language is complex and there are many exceptions to the rules. Uncovering each person’s unique talent helps decrease the impact of their impairment. Speech-language therapy involves not only identifying speech and language weaknesses, but learning to understanding individual strengths, in order to, treat the whole person.