Short explainer by Ming (Agents of Speech) outlining what speech therapy covers for children: primarily language and speech skills under the umbrella of communication, plus social play skills and feeding/swallowing concerns. The speaker lists subcomponents (articulation, phonology, expressive/receptive language, storytelling, verbal reasoning) and notes feeding/swallowing uses similar muscles to speech.
The two things that we use the most, that we teach the most, language and speech. This means speech therapy will teach everything that contributes towards communication. And that's under the big umbrella of communication. There's mainly speech, language, and then there's also social play skills. And within speech, sound abilities, we have articulation, phonological skills, all these jargons. And also language. We have expressive, receptive, storytelling, verbal reasoning, all these kind of things inside. And speech therapy also includes feeding and swallowing, meaning if your child has problems eating, you can also consult a speech therapist like myself, although that is not where I try to put my expertise on. And the reason why for this is because feeding and swallowing just uses similar muscles to speech. It uses the same mechanisms around the neck area.
