It can take up to about second grade for a child to acquire fluent speech that is free of articulation errors. However, certain patterns of errors can make a child less understandable to his or her communication partners. This also applies to younger children. Today I wanted to highlight some of these patterns and give you, the parent, some suggestions for improving toddler speech clarity.
Let’s dedicate a blog post to a very important and practical question: “how long does speech therapy take to work?” The short answer is, and I must be honest…I don’t know, nor does any speech-language pathologist (SLP). But there are several factors that affect how long you should expect therapy to take:
One question I quite frequently get in my practice as a speech-language pathologist is how to deal with vocal hoarseness or raspiness — is there vocal hoarseness speech therapy? Getting a “raspy voice” is incredibly common in both children and adults. I’m sure the reader has experienced this multiple times in his or her life. At times vocal hoarseness or raspiness is temporary and something you can easily attribute to excess shouting at say a sporting event or a viral infection; in other cases, the cause is mysterious. Also, sometimes the hoarseness and raspiness can be temporary and responsive to the vocal hygiene strategies discussed below. In other cases, the hoarseness or raspiness is chronic and in need of attention from an experienced speech-language pathologist with knowledge of voice disorders and/or an ear-nose-throat (ENT) doctor. This post is intended to give you a sense of how you would potentially manage such vocal hoarseness or raspiness.
I am proud to announce that our full-service speech therapy plan is available to parents in Brooklyn, New York, my hometown. We are good at technology: we’ve harnessed the best in medical device technology to really revolutionize the treatment of speech and articulation challenges with Speech Buddies Tools. But recently we have developed a unique means of matching parents in need of services with great local therapists and we’re launching in—fuhgeddaboudit—Brooklyn! The need for private speech services is widespread and covers a variety of speech and language challenges. This post is dedicated to helping you match your family’s unique needs with both the expertise of a local Speech Buddies therapist and your family’s budget. Whether your child is 2 years old and in need of a boost in language skills, or a middle-school student who could use some extra academic support, our plan is the perfect place to start. Below I will walk through several of the most common reasons you, a Brooklyn parent, might be searching for a great Brooklyn Speech Therapist.
Photo: Neighborhood Kids by Walter
We often get the question posed to us, “how can I help my toddler to talk?” The short is answer is blunt and very obvious: talk to your child! That’s right, just make sure you are directly engaging your toddler in a wide variety of activities that are rich in language. At a high level, it really is that simple! This is a recommendation that is rooted in reams of research in the field of speech-language pathology and allied disciplines. However, just hearing from me, “talk to your child!” might leave you frustrated and wanting more: how do talk to my child? What are some fun toddler language learning activities that are best for this? This blog post is dedicated to providing some guidelines and tips for making this happen. It is one of the most important things you can do as parent of young child and it can have a positive impact on not only language development, but also on future academic potential and even on emotional development.
photo: Happy Kids and Orange Bird by Sam Howzit
