Emily Hull's NDT Journey as a Speech Therapist

When I first began working with infants and toddlers as a new therapist, I was unaware of what my role was as a speech-language pathologist. I was often asked the question of “What do you do with infants, they don’t talk?” I honestly didn’t know. I was soon introduced to NDT and attended a couple introduction classes. However, I still didn’t know my role as a speech-language pathologist working with infants and toddlers. A couple years later I completed my Eight-week NDT course, and finally I was developing a clearsense of the importance of a speech-language pathologist working with infants and toddlers. Infants may not “talk”, but they eat and they use the same muscles to talk that they do to eat. The relationship between motor development and the mouthintrigued me and continues to intrigue me. The eight-week course deepened my desire to learn more, handle more, and seek NDT “speech” mentors. I continually desire more at the next level. My growth as a therapist continues as well as my integration and synthesis of NDT related to speech therapy. My passion as a therapist is definitely in the areas of oral motor/feeding and NDT. I can’t imagine my professional career, or any other speech-languagepathologist’s career, without such a foundation; all speech-language pathologists should have at least a basic understanding of how the mouth correlates with the body, especially for speech and feeding. For me, NDT has defined my role and passion as aspeech-language pathologist. I want to help others find excitement and passion in treating the whole child from an NDT perspective!

Emily Hull, MS, CCC-SLP is an NDT speech candidate instructor.