Resources for New Orleans Families

There will be a moment, probably more than one, when you sit in the car after a therapy session and think: is this actually working? Your child has been coming to therapy for weeks, maybe months. You are doing the home practice. You are showing up consistently. And yet you cannot always point to something concrete and say: there, that is the progress. This post is for that moment. Why progress in therapy is not always visible The most meaningful early work in speech therapy h

One of the most common points of confusion we hear from parents is around the terms "speech delay" and "language delay." They are often used interchangeably, even by well-meaning professionals, but they are not the same thing. Understanding the difference can help you ask better questions, advocate more effectively for your child, and make sense of what an evaluation actually tells you. What is speech? Speech refers to the physical production of sound. It is the motor act of

You did the preparation. You visited the school, built the visual schedule, emailed the teacher, and packed the backpack three times. And now school has started and things are still hard. That is not a sign that something went wrong. It is a sign that your child is doing exactly what their nervous system needs to do right now, which is work very hard to manage an enormous amount of newness all at once. Here is what the first few weeks of school actually look like for many neu

Summer in New Orleans is a lot. The heat is relentless, the schedule disappears overnight, and the city somehow manages to be even louder than usual. For families with neurodivergent children, the end of the school year can bring a complicated mix of relief and dread. The structure that kept your child regulated all year is suddenly gone. The predictable routine of school mornings, familiar teachers, and consistent schedules gives way to long unstructured days. For many autis

People often ask us what a typical day at Spark looks like. The honest answer is that no two days are identical, because no two children are identical. But there is a rhythm to our days that reflects everything we believe about how therapy should feel. Here is a look inside. The space Spark is located on the second floor of a building in Uptown New Orleans at 2620 Jena Street. We chose Uptown intentionally. It is where our families are, where the pediatricians and schools we

Starting something new is hard, especially when it involves your child and you are not sure what you are walking into. We hear from parents all the time who felt anxious before their first session, unsure what therapy would look like or whether their child would cooperate or whether they were doing the right thing. You are doing the right thing. Here is what the first month of speech therapy at Spark actually looks like. It starts with the evaluation Before therapy begins, we

One of the most common things we hear from parents is some version of this: "I wasn't sure if I was overreacting." They noticed something. Their gut was telling them something. But they talked themselves out of it, waited a few more months, and then came to us wishing they had called sooner. You are not overreacting. If something feels off with your child's communication, that feeling is worth paying attention to. Communication development does not follow a single timeline, a

Raising a neurodivergent child in New Orleans means navigating a city that is loud, festive, and full of sensory input at every turn. It can be a lot. But it also means you are part of a community with more resources, affirming spaces, and family support networks than many parents realize when they are just getting started. We put this list together for the families we work with, and for anyone who finds us through a late-night Google search looking for where to begin. We upd