Debbie Shiwbalak, MA CCC-SLP

Reviews (6)

• Re: Speech Therapist for 3.5 year old?

  November 2024

  Debbie Shiwbalak (917) 373-0511 was wonderful with our daughter around the same age.

• Private Therapists Recommendation

  December 2023

  +1 for Debbie. We too have been working with her for years on articulation and other unique speech needs. She's fantastic.

• Speech Therapist Recommendation - Debbie Shiwbalak

  March 2023

  TL;DR: Our daughter overcame a large speech delay thanks to an amazing therapist. This was a big week in our house -- our four year old is officially graduating from speech therapy! For nearly two years, our daughter worked regularly with Debbie Shiwbalak (speechpathologistnyc.com). It was a terrific experience, and literally life changing for our family. Like many kids, our daughter came out of lockdown struggling with her expressive communication, which consequently created receptive delays. She pushed back against transitions, at home and at school, and displayed anti-social traits that hindered her relationships with peers and adults (no eye contact, primarily playing by herself, refusing to talk to new adults, attachment issues, etc.). However, she never qualified for support through early intervention, so we reached out to Debbie to start private therapy, thanks to the feedback of another PSP parent. Along this journey, Debbie helped us rule out other issues (medical, neuro, etc.), providing appropriate guidance and suggestions that extended well beyond the role we hired her for. She even built our daughter a transition chart, and met regularly with her teachers to align on goals to help us better prioritize needs and encourage even more progress. Debbie is continuing to work with our daughter in the classroom for an hour a week, as we work to encourage more back-and-forth (and on-topic) conversations between our daughter and her classmates. In short, Debbie helped our daughter find her voice and she's now caught up to her peers. Debbie approached every session with kindness, understanding, support and fun. She also provided clear homework for us, her parents, which changed almost weekly as our daughter hit new milestones. Now, as we begin to sunset this relationship, the feelings are bittersweet. We’ve gained a wonderfully chatty, joyful and engaged child, but we’ll be losing a friend and parental ally. I can’t recommend Debbie enough.

• ISO: Pediatric Speech Therapist

  May 2022

  Debbie Shiwbalak is great. She worked with our son from when he was 2 til he turned 3, and everyone is amazed at the progress he made.

• Debbie Shiwbalak, MA CCC-SLP

  February 2022

  Our daughter started working with Debbie two months before her third birthday. Our first session went by so quickly that she didn't want Debbie to go. This remained the case up until our last session five months later. Our daughter was so excited for "Debbie days" as they played many different interactive activities and games, which turned each session into a fun class. Our daughter achieved her goals in such a short period of time due to Debbie's ability to quickly assess her challenging words and phrases. She gave homework that our daughter enjoyed doing, worked around our schedule, and stayed in communication with our daughter's school. Debbie is thoughtful, caring, kind, engaging, and very knowledgeable. We' re very fortunate to have met her and are forever grateful for the incredible progress our daughter made in her hands.

• Speech Therapist Recommendation - Debbie Shiwbalak (Gift of Gab)

  September 2021

  My partner and I wanted to put this out there for anyone in need: we highly recommend Debbie Shiwbalak for speech therapy. Debbie worked with our 2-year-old son (LP) on his speech delay, and she was amazing. LP’s language comprehension was excellent, but he was saying very few words. However, because he had no other delays, we didn’t qualify for city-sponsored Early Intervention. We hired Debbie (reimbursed by our health insurance) and are glad we did. We loved the way Debbie immediately and directly engaged with LP, without any bureaucratic BS or adult-to-adult evaluations that might have made our kiddo uneasy. Instead, she went right to play time and language training, and LP, who can sometimes be reserved around new people, quickly and completely connected with her. Their playtime together was energetic, fun and most of all productive for his spoken language development. Debbie’s manner of encouraging the flow of speech the course of natural interactions was very comforting. Her structured play time let LP have fun while also making it clear to him that he was there to learn. Her method of touching his face and mouth to encourage speech was gentle and natural, and LP clearly took to it. Meeting once or twice a week for less than two months, Debbie taught us as parents a lot about how to help LP talk more, and pretty soon he “graduated,” as he’s now repeating our words and excited to talk, adding new words at a tremendous rate. All in all, we couldn’t recommend Debbie more, so if your child is having any kind of speech issues, definitely contact Debbie.