Clarity Accent Modification

In the past, it was thought that various tongue or mouth exercises, including blowing horns, were helpful to teach children to speak properly.  These exercises are very different from the movements involved in producing actual speech, and so they are called Nonspeech Oral Motor Exercises.  Research has shown that these types of exercises are not helpful for typical speech therapy. 

It turns out that talking doesn’t require much tongue strength, so exercises that focus on building strength are not particularly helpful.  What’s needed to speak properly is to practice coordinating speech movements with the brain.  In other words, to learn to speak well, practice speaking correctly.

When are nonspeech oral motor exercises useful?  If your child has had a stroke or has a neurological weakness of the tongue, exercises might be used.  Sometimes SLPs will use these exercises when treating a true tongue thrust.  However, for most speech errors, including a basic lisp for S and Z, nonspeech oral motor exercises are NOT recommended.  Just teach your child how to produce the sound correctly using proper tongue placement, and then practice, practice, practice!

To learn how to teach your child how to produce sounds correctly, check out my online courses at www.clarityspeechandlanguage.com.

Does your child have a lisp?  Here are some fun exercises that will help your child learn to produce 'S' correctly.

First of all there’s the Smiling Librarian trick.  First you pucker your mouth as you say ‘SHHHHH!’ and after a couple of seconds, you switch your mouth shape to a smile as you continue to do it.  Smiling should change it to an ‘S’ sound.  Then switch back to a pucker shape and the ‘SH’ sound should return.  Keep trying that to see what happens to your tongue as you do this.  Your tongue should move forward a bit for ‘S’ and back a bit for ‘SH’.

Another fun exercise is the rainbird sprinkler -- hold your arms out in front of you, hands together, and imitate a rainbird sprinkler.

First you make the ‘T’ sound, one per second, as you slowly move your arms to the right 90 degrees. Then, quickly return back to your original position, making the 'T' sound increasingly rapidly until it is continuous and turns into an 'S' sound. 

Basically, the 'S' sound is a 'T' where the airstream is no longer stopped by the tongue but allowed to escape through a narrow gap.  Have your child do the rainbird exercise with you to see if it turns into an ‘S’ sound.

Have fun!

This is a video story to help children practice speech sounds and language.  It is a great resource for speech students working on the following sounds:

• VOCALIC R, especially ER

For articulation practice, have your child or student read the story to practice the sounds in reading.  Or, to practice the sounds in conversation, read the story to them first and let them retell it to you. 

For language practice, ask the child to retell the story to you, using as many story elements as possible:

• CHARACTER – who?

Ask them questions about details of the story.  Point out pronouns and ask them to switch proper nouns to pronouns.  As they retell the story, check for proper past tense verb usage.  To practice inferences, stop the story at key points and ask the child what might happen next.  As them what a character might be feeling or what they might do.

This story is included as a downloadable pdf in the online course:

VOCALIC R SOUNDS

For more tips on speech therapy and online courses, please visit www.clarityspeechandlanguage.com.

Have fun!

Is your child receiving online speech therapy? I'll tell you how to get the most out of it! For more info, visit www.clarityspeechandlangauge.com

ONLINE SPEECH THERAPY – GET THE MOST OUT OF IT!

Not all online therapy is created equal.  Here’s how to make sure your child is getting the most out of her online speech-therapy sessions.

1. HAVE A GOOD INTERNET CONNECTION

1. HAVE A GOOD INTERNET CONNECTION

Obviously, if you don’t have a stable internet connection, online therapy can’t take place.  Either you’ll lose the signal altogether, or the video and sound will be choppy and freeze up occasionally.  Imagine if you’re the speech therapist, trying to hear and observe the child’s mouth to see if they are making the sound correctly, and the video or audio keeps glitching right at the precise moment they are making that sound.  Or if you are the child, trying to observe the SLP making the sound, and she freezes or disappears from the call.  Not a good thing!  Consider upgrading your internet service or going to a location that provides free, stable internet service.  Close down any unnecessary programs that might be running in the background.

1. USE A GOOD MICROPHONE OR HEADSET

For speech therapy to work, all participants must be able to hear, and hear well!  If you have a good headset, let your child use that.  Keep the microphone 3 inches from her mouth and tell her to speak in a normal tone of voice.  If you don’t have a headset, you can just use the internal speaker of your device.  Just make sure the child is sitting close enough that the sound can be picked up adequately.

1. HAVE GOOD LIGHTING

Make sure your room has good lighting and have your child sit facing the light source.  If you put your child with his back to a window, for instance, he will be backlit, and his face and mouth will be in shadow and hard for the speech therapist to see.  So, if your room has windows, place your child so that he is facing the windows.  If necessary, turn on a desk lamp and direct it towards your child.

1. USE A BIG SCREEN (OR TWO)

Online speech therapy usually requires the child to be able to see 3 things:  Herself, the therapist, and the materials the SLP is sharing in another window.  If the child is using a cell phone, you can imagine that each of those windows is going to be very small.  It is hard for the child to see her own mouth movements and compare them to the SLP’s mouth movements.  And it makes it harder for the child to see and read what is on the shared screen.  Don’t get me wrong, as an SLP we would rather have the child show up to a session using a cell phone than not show up at all!  But keep in mind that she could be getting better help if she has a larger screen.  A laptop or desktop computer with a large screen, or even an extra monitor, would be ideal!  If you don’t have one, check with friends, relatives or neighbors to see if they have old ones lying around at their house.  You’d be surprised how many people upgrade their equipment and then don’t know what to do with the old stuff, so it just sits in their garage or storage room.  They might love the chance to put it to good use.

1. KEEP THE ROOM QUIET WITH NO DISTRACTIONS

I considered making this #1!   You’d be surprised how much background noise a computer’s or tablet’s mic will pick up.  Yay for technology.  Unfortunately, that makes it really hard for the SLP to distinguish the fine details of a child’s ‘S’ sound, for instance.  It’s also hard for the child to concentrate on the therapist if his siblings are playing in the background, or the TV is on.  Also, make sure your child doesn’t have any other distracting tabs open in his browser window – YouTube, unfinished games, email, etc.  We CAN tell when the child’s eyes are wandering from the speech therapy task.   

1. SIT NEARBY TO KEEP YOUR CHILD ON TRACK

 Along those lines, stay in the room with your child to make sure he stays focused on the speech therapy tasks.  Young children, especially, might have a hard time sitting still.  Online therapists do their very best to keep the child engaged and focused, but there are limits to what we can do from a computer screen.  We can’t take away that popcorn that your child is snacking on or provide a fidget toy to keep his hands busy.  Parents who are in the room can monitor their child’s behavior and help the therapy session stay productive.

1. PRACTICE THE SAME ACTIVITIES WITH YOUR CHILD

Last, but not least, one of the very best things you can do to make online speech therapy productive, is to follow along and learn what the SLP suggests your child practice.  Learn the techniques to make the sound and help your child practice that sound every day.  That is the best way to get the most out of therapy and help your child progress faster. 

If you’d like to learn more about how you can help your child with her speech therapy at home, please visit our website:  www.clarityspeechandlanguage.com.  We offer online courses for parents that include practice materials, as well.

Thanks for listening and have a great day!

Some parents may wonder why their child qualified for speech therapy at school when they haven't noticed any sound errors.  Speech-language pathologists work on many other language skills that are important for your child to learn.  We'll discuss them in this video.

For more information, please visit www.clarityspeechandlanguage.com.

MY KID CAN TALK JUST FINE -- SO WHY IS HE IN SPEECH THERAPY?

It can be confusing to understand exactly what a speech language pathologist does, because they do so many different things!  People tend to associate a speech therapist with someone who helps kids pronounce their R's correctly, etc.  We do that, but we also help kids who are having trouble with understanding the language they read and hear, and expressing themselves through language. Some examples of things these kids might struggle with are listening to the teacher in class and then remembering everything she says so that they can complete their homework, understanding verbal or written directions that involve doing multiple steps and some planning on their own, listening or reading for details and being able to use them to answer questions, listening for the main idea and being able to explain it to somebody, and writing or speaking their answers in complete grammatical sentences.

Some parents may hesitate to have their child pulled for speech at school, worrying that other children will make fun of them or treat them differently.  Why is it worth it to give these kids help with their language skills?

First of all, these are skills that will really help kids as they progress through the upper grades, and eventually enter the workforce.  Around third or fourth grade, school can become increasingly difficult for kids with language disorders, because the curriculum become more language intensive.  There’s an emphasis on reading harder texts, and writing in a more formal manner.  By junior high, the reading and writing expectations become even more complex.  A child who ‘got by’ when he started elementary school will quickly fall behind, and this can have long-lasting effects on the child’s future education, career prospects and earning potential. 

So the bottom line is, if you suspect your child might have a language disorder, get him tested, and get him therapy if needed. At home, you can help your child to increase his language skills by reading to him and with him, asking questions about what he’s read, and encouraging him to answer in complete grammatical sentences.

 For more information on symptoms of a speech and language disorder, please listen to my podcast or read my blog called ‘Does Your Child Have a Speech-Language Disorder?’

I hope this information has been helpful to you.

The 'Language Processing Hierarchy' is a way for children to organize language concepts from simple relationships to more complex ones. Learn these important skills that your child should know!

WHAT IS THE LANGUAGE PROCESSING HIERARCHY?

The Language Processing Hierarchy is a way of organizing fundamental language skills, based on the book, ‘The Source for Processing Disorders’ by Gail J. Richard, Ph.D., CCC-SLP.  Her work is more complex than I can describe here, so I’ll just try to summarize the basic idea of the Language Hierarchy Chart.

The idea is that children learn to sort language concepts into categories in their brain, starting with simple relationships to more complex ones.  If your child is given a language processing test as part of his evaluation, he will likely be tested on these same things.

1. LABELING – Can the child name the object?

• It’s a shoe.

1. FUNCTIONS – Can the child tell what the object does?

• You wear it on your foot.

1. ASSOCIATIONS – Can the child tell what things go with that object?

• Socks and feet go with a shoe.

1. CATEGORIZING – Can the child tell what objects are in a certain category?

• A shoe is in the clothes group or the footwear group.

At this level, they also include the following:

1. ANTONYMS/ SYNONYMS

• The opposite of hot is cold. Another word for happy is glad.

• This is above, this is below, this is beside, left, right, etc.

1. SIMILARITIES – How are two objects alike as far as purpose, category or function?

• A fridge is like a stove because they are both appliances in your kitchen that you use for your food.

1. DIFFERENCES – How are two objects different as far as purpose, category or function?

• A fridge keeps your food cold and a stove heats up your food.

1. MULTIPLE MEANINGS – What are two meanings for this word?

• Trunk can be the long nose of an elephant or the bottom part of a tree.

1. IDIOMS – What does this figure of speech really mean?

• It’s raining cats and dogs means that it’s raining really hard.

1. ANALOGIES – Comparing something to another thing using the word ‘like’ or ‘as’.

1. Life is like a box of chocolates means that you never know what’s going to happen in life just like when you pick a chocolate from a box. You never know what kind you’re going to get.

These are all great things to work on with your child!  For more tips on how to improve basic language skills, especially in young children, please watch my video ‘Parents Can Help With Their Child’s Speech-Language Treatment’.

Thanks for watching and have a great day!

Are wondering how to prepare for your child's speech-language evaluation? Do you want to know what kind of tests will be given? I'll tell you all about it! For more information on speech and language therapy, please visit www.clarityspeechandlanguage.com.

WHAT TO EXPECT AT YOUR CHILD’S SPEECH-LANGUAGE EVALUATION

If you suspect your child has a speech or language disorder, you may have taken the first step and requested an evaluation – either with the Early Intervention Center in your community, your public school, or a private therapist. How do you prepare? Really, just make sure your child is happy, well-fed, and well-rested. Take a water bottle if necessary. Visit the restroom beforehand. Depending on where your child is being tested, the amount of time might range from a half-hour to several hours. If your child is very young, I would recommend trying to split it up into half-hour sessions. Also, it’s better to leave other children at home, to minimize distractions. What kind of testing should be done? Ideally, a comprehensive speech-language evaluation should include at least these 5 things:

HEARING SCREENING – This is to rule out the contribution of hearing difficulties to the problem. Be sure to tell the examiner if your child has experienced frequent ear infections or has tubes in his ears. This hearing screening might consist of 2 parts:

PURE TONE TESTING

TYMPANOMETRY TEST

ORAL-MOTOR EXAM (this might also be called an Oral-Peripheral Exam or Oral-Mechanism Exam) – This is to make sure all speech structures are working properly. It can rule out other underlying disorders and may help identify conditions like Childhood Apraxia of Speech. This exam may include:

SPEECH STRUCTURES

VOICE AND AIR PRESSURE

SPEECH-MOTOR SKILLS

INTELLIGIBILITY TEST – This can determine whether your child is on track for speech in spite of any errors. It involves listening to the child speak in conversation and marking how many words were intelligible to the listener. The clinician can also mark down any sound and language errors that the child exhibits in conversation.

ARTICULATION TEST – This test can tell you if your child’s speech errors are typical or are a concern. It involves asking the child to produce target words and sentences to see what sound errors they might have.

LANGUAGE TEST – These tests can tell you if your child is having difficulty understanding or producing meaningful language. They look at the big picture of communication rather than just sound errors. These tests are designed to measure expressive language and receptive language. They involve asking the child to follow directions, respond to questions, label pictures, choose appropriate sentence structure, describe an object, tell how things go together, label items, etc.

POSSIBLE OTHER TESTS:

LANGUAGE PROCESSING TEST – This is similar to the other language test; however, it focuses on whether or not your child has trouble with language due to issues ‘behind the scenes’. There may be neurological problems with causes unknown that make it difficult for the child to understand language. A child with a language processing disorder might have trouble with attention, following directions, memory, organizing a cohesive story, and things like that.

AUDITORY PROCESSING TEST – This also involves the child’s ability to process language, but it is focused specifically on the child’s ability to use his auditory system in conjunction with his brain to make sense of the language signals he receives. The child may have difficulty understanding speech when there is background noise or identifying the difference between sounds that are similar.

SOCIAL LANGUAGE TEST – This test can tell you if your child is using language appropriately in social settings. It is often given to children suspected of being on the autistic spectrum or who may be socially delayed for other reasons.

By now you are probably overwhelmed at the thought of all these tests! Keep in mind that your child may not need all of them, and a good clinician will know how to keep your child engaged and when to stop to give him a break. It’s OK to voice any concerns you might have ahead of time. What happens after testing? It may take a week or two for the clinician to process and score all the tests. Then you will most likely be called in to go over the results and decide where to go from there.

What if it looks like your child has a speech-language disorder? Don’t panic! You are not alone. It is estimated that between 5-10% of school-age children have a speech-language disorder. Just congratulate yourself that you caught the problem and are getting your child help early so that they can improve their academic and social success!

If you want to find out more about how you can help your child with speech and language at home, please visit www.clarityspeechandlanguge.com.

Sometimes kids get discouraged while working on vocalic ‘R’, because it can take days or months for them to get it right.  To lighten up the mood and help them feel where their tongue should go, I do the ‘R Warmup Cheer’.  The idea is to get them to produce ‘Y’ syllables, because making ‘Y’ moves the back of their tongue to the back of their mouth where it should be for ‘R’.  Most kids can say the ‘Y’ sound in ‘yoyo’ fairly easily.  So the ‘R’ warmup cheer goes like this (and you can’t be afraid to be silly-- you’ve got to own it, and so do they!): 

Yo! Yo!  (do the hand motions and the voices in the video)

Yi! Yi!

Yay! Yay!

Yah! Yah!

Yee! Yee!

Yeeeeee Yeeeeee!

Yee Yeeeerrrrrrrr!  And your tongue goes back and up to make the R sound!

 (Use your thumbs to represent your tongue going back and up.)

The 'EEE' vowel is a good one to practice to try to get an 'ER' sound, because your tongue is up and back in the mouth already.

Good Luck!

If you have a child receiving speech services through your public school, you may be surprised to learn that he or she is only receiving 20-30 minutes of therapy a week, and that time is often shared with other students.  Why is this the case?

WHY DOESN’T THE SCHOOL SLP SPEND MORE TIME WITH MY CHILD?

 If you have a child receiving speech services through your public school, you may be surprised to learn that he or she is only receiving 20-30 minutes of therapy a week, and that time is often shared with other students.

Why is this the case?

1. High caseloads nationwide.  There are some exceptions, but generally caseloads are extremely high across the United States. Because there are so many kids to treat, your school speech-language pathologist (SLP) may have minimal time to see kids.  She also may have to put them in groups for therapy.  This is due to several factors:

1. Shortage of qualified SLPs with master’s degrees

What can you do about these issues? 

1. You can contact your school district administrators to let them know you’d like an emphasis to be placed on hiring sufficient SLPs to meet the caseload demands.

1. Paperwork – School SLPs must deal with ever-increasing special education and Medicaid paperwork due to new regulations. Filling out paperwork, sending it home, taking data, writing progress reports, filling out forms for Medicaid – these things all take up a large chunk of your school SLP’s time.

What can you do to help?

1. It will help your local SLP if you return signed paperwork promptly.  😉

1. Meetings – Did you know that an SLP with 70 kids on her caseload has at least 70-100 IEP-related meetings to attend each year? These are usually held before and after school, and require coordinating the schedules of all 3-5 IEP team members. In addition, your SLP may have Child Support Team meetings to discuss with teachers and administrators which kids might potentially need services.  Then there are faculty meetings and other types of meetings to attend.  All this eats into your school SLPs workday.

What can you do to help?

1. You can help by being flexible when your child’s SLP is attempting to schedule IEP meetings. Review paperwork ahead of time when possible and have your information and questions ready so that the IEP meeting can run efficiently.

1. Testing – It is not uncommon for a school SLP to do hearing screenings for all the kindergarten through 3rd grade students each year, as well as speech and language screenings for many other students who have been referred with potential issues. Those kids who don’t pass speech screens have to go through an intervention process which requires extra paperwork and time, coordinating things with the classroom teacher.  Once that is done, there are multiple speech and language tests to be given to the student to see exactly what the issues are and what his current levels are.  Often there are several hours of testing to be done for new students, and this usually must be repeated every 3 years that the child is receiving services.

What can you do to help?

1. Again, it will help your local SLP if you return signed paperwork promptly and communicate as much info as you can about your child’s issues. You can ask for speech homework for your child, and practice with him as much as possible.

1. Scheduling Conflicts – The school SLP must treat kids when their class isn’t working on core subjects like English, math and science. Each grade has different times when they do that.  In addition, there are other things like recess, art, PE, library, reading and lunch consider.  Juggling all these things for 70 students can become a scheduling nightmare.  Often, kids need to be grouped together just to be seen during free periods.

What can you do to help?

1. Encourage your student and the classroom teacher to support the SLP’s attempts to schedule your child during open slots. Be supportive if sometimes this might bump into a ‘fun’ activity.

I hope this video helps you understand the challenges of school-based speech therapy, and what you can do to help. 

If you’d like to learn more about how to help your child with speech at home, please check out my online courses HERE.

Thanks and have a great day!

MY 6 FAVORITE SPEECH TOOLS

1. MR. MOUTH – or whatever it’s called.  This is great for showing kids where to put their tongue.  It’s actually a puppet, although I haven’t been able to puppetize it successfully, if that’s even a word.  But the kids like it and it makes it easier to see where their tongue should go.  There are a lot of sounds where this is important, especially /r/, since the tongue goes back in the mouth for that one.

1. TONGUE DEPRESSORS – These come in boxes of cherry or grape flavors, and so the kids don’t mind as much having a stick put in their mouth.  These are great for showing where to place the tongue, or for holding the tongue back where it needs to be.

1. TONGUE LIFTER – This is like a fancy tongue depressor that is shaped to go around the tongue and make it easier to push the tongue back to make sounds like /r/. They are not flavored, but they are smooth and come in fun colors.

1. BOOKS – Colorful picture books are great for getting kids to practice their speech sounds. I like the ones with lots of pictures and just enough words to give a variety of speech sound opportunities.

1. The Lazy Ladybug -- this is one of my favorites because it has all the sounds in it (I think?).  It’s a cute, easy story to read and have them retell, with a fun ending.

1. HAND MIRROR – A must for speech therapy! This enables the child to see where they are putting their tongue, how they are shaping their mouth, if they are holding their jaw still, etc.

1. MY VIDEO COURSES – Well, of course I’m going to include my video courses, because they have lots of practice videos and pdf docs that you can use to have your child practice every sound in every position. Check them out!

You can find links to all these items HERE.

Thanks and have a great day!