Accepting New Clients
Accepting New Clients
Helping Knoxville’s
Littlest Voices Flourish
A private pediatric speech therapy clinic offering in-person and teletherapy services for Tennessee residents.
At The Garden, we celebrate each child’s particular strengths and needs. First, we partner with our families to discover the specific communication tools their child needs in their toolbox. Next, we equip both the child and the family. Finally, we watch them flourish! We can’t wait to be a part of your team.
Meet The Owner & Your Therapist
Emily Davis M.S., CCC-SLP
Owner, Speech Language Pathologist
Emily channels her expertise, intentionality, and passion for helping those around her flourish into delivering supportive and specialized care. She opened The Garden to create a therapy environment where kids and caregivers would actually enjoy being. She knows that engaging in therapy can be a challenging and vulnerable experience for clients (with high pay-offs!). Therefore, her clinic is designed to communicate calm, kindness, challenge, focus, and growth.
Emily is especially passionate about listening, being flexible, and adapting to each child’s and family’s needs.
Professional licenses:
Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). State certified by the TN Dept. of Health and TN Dept. of Education.
Education:
Emily received her Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and her undergraduate degrees in Business Administration and Marketing from the University of South Carolina.
Who I Love To Help
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Speech Sound Disorders
Intervention for articulation and phonological disorders increases speech intelligibility by teaching your child how to make and use their speech sounds correctly through structured play-based activities.
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Stuttering
Intervention for stuttering increases your child’s ability to communicate confidently through activities focused on education/awareness/beliefs about stuttering and through developing individualized communication strategies.
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Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)
Who?
Children with CAS have difficulty executing the complex and coordinated movements involved in speech production. This can result in difficulty with:moving the mouth to say sounds
learning/imitating new sounds or movements
combining sounds into natural-sounding words and sentences
changing their voice volume/intonation/prosody
non-speech movements (e.g., blowing bubbles, licking lips, sticking out tongue, etc.)
These difficulties can result in extremely unintelligible speech. If your child demonstrates the above and is making very slow (to no) progress in speech therapy, they may have CAS.
What Does Therapy Look Like?
Using principles of motor learning (PML), sessions are structured to:Achieve high amounts of correct practice (building new neural pathways!)
Build off skills the child already has (increasing their success and confidence).
Ensure learning and generalization of motor skills across contexts (natural and easy speech in and out of the session).
I make sure that this hard work is FUN!
Activities depend on the child and how they learn best; we may play on the floor, incorporate movement, or play a structured table game.
Why?
I work with many children who have spent years in speech therapy making minimal to no progress.But then, with the right approach, target selection, and family coaching, they start to make incredible and life-changing progress. I love seeing the world open up for these families.
I want to help families get the resources and help they need from the beginning of the therapy process, not years down the road.
Emily is recognized in the Apraxia Kids SLP Directory.
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Late Talkers
Who?
Toddlers (18-30 months) who have delayed development in vocabulary, sentence structure, and/or speech sound articulation.What Does Therapy Look Like?
I love play-based and child-led therapy at this age. Intervention focuses on parent coaching and education.Why?
It is important to monitor progress in these early stages, as early language development delays can be the first sign of other diagnoses like Developmental Language Disorder (a lifelong language impairment), autism, social communication disorder, other learning disabilities, etc.
Getting Started with Speech Therapy
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Step 1 | Phone Consultation
This short session is the perfect opportunity to address your concerns and determine whether further evaluation and intervention are needed. -
Step 2 | Evaluation
A comprehensive evaluation includes direct assessment, clinical observation, and caregiver input. You will receive a detailed written report and individualized treatment plan. -
Step 3 | Specialized Intervention
Your child will receive individualized treatment and counseling in their area of need. Sessions are designed to facilitate steady progress by utilizing evidence-based reatment approaches, parent coaching, home practice, and regular progress reporting.
What parents are saying
“I honestly can’t say enough good things about Miss Emily. My daughter absolutely loves her and looks forward to going every week. Miss Emily is very engaging and has great ways of getting my daughter to work on speech while playing and having fun.”
— Kaela
“Miss Emily is the best!! She is patient, creative, learns her client'’ personalities in order to adapt her sessions to fit their learning styles, and is so much fun. My son's speech has grown leaps and bounds since meeting with her. She is definitely an expert in her field. I highly recommend her!”
— Megan
We have loved working with Emily. She truly cares about each child and finding a plan to help your child grow and achieve their goals. I am so pleased with her services.
— Summer
“My son is really shy and struggles with articulating a few sounds. Emily put him at ease immediately and worked wonders with him! He’s thriving in preschool with such confidence now, and I can’t begin to thank and recommend Emily enough!”
— Katie