Perhaps no other methodology has engendered more passionate opinion, and even controversy, in the field of speech pathology than non-speech oral motor exercises (NSOMEs). What’s all the fuss about and what are NSOMEs?
photo: World in a Bubble by Alexandre Normand
The phenomenon of tongue thrust is a rather murky one. As the name implies, tongue thrust is observed when the tongue protrudes through the child’s front teeth and is mostly caused by an imbalance in the oral muscles. However, there are other causes that I will address below. Our “What is Tongue Thrust?” Speech Buddies blog post is a great place to start for understanding the basics of tongue thrust. Among speech pathologists, there exists some controversy as to its impact on speech. Some therapists insist that any open-mouth posture, including tongue thrust, is an extremely significant clinical matter and that it will have a wide-ranging on a child’s speech development and even social development. Others will contend that a true tongue thrust that can impact speech clarity is quite rare and that, in fact, almost all children exhibit some form of tongue thrust which most will grow out of; the vast majority of these children will exhibit no speech challenge whatsoever. So what is the “truth” of the matter? Like many things, it can be somewhat nuanced. This blog post is dedicated to providing some actionable advice to parents as well as some tips for either intervening to correct a tongue thrust or “watchful waiting” so that in the event that tongue thrust treatment needs to be addressed, you will be maximally empowered, as a parent, to do so.
This post is dedicated to all you lucky families who come from linguistically diverse backgrounds, and who are in the process of raising bilingual (or even multi-lingual children though in this post I will just use the term “bilingual”). The truth is: I really envy you. Being bilingual is a special gift, one that I wish my two young children could benefit from. But, unfortunately, both my wife and I come from monolingual, English-speaking backgrounds and even though I speak formerly-fluent German—I am too out-of-practice to call it fluent—and my wife studied Italian in college, there is really no hope for us: our kids simply don’t have a rich enough home environment to acquire the special brain wiring to be truly bilingual. But, just because one or even both of the parents in a family come from strong background in say, Spanish, Chinese or Armenian, that does not mean the child(ren) will automatically be bilingual. Bilingualism takes dedication and consistency throughout childhood. I will go over several tips that can help support bilingualism in your family, both in the context of a developmental speech and language challenge and with typically developing speech and language. Armed with practical information, you can feel confident in pursuing bilingualism for your child and endow them with a lifelong gift.
Of all the speech sounds that Speech Buddies Tools target (namely R, S, CH, SH and L), the L sound is considered to be the earliest developing sound; in other words, of these trickier sounds that many children find difficult to accurately produce, the L sound is the one we expect them to master first. It is probably the simplest of these sounds to produce correctly from a standpoint of what the tongue and mouth has to do in order to say the sound correctly. But this sound can nonetheless present problems and this blog post is dedicated to providing parents with some crucial tips to maximizing the effectiveness of home practice, to ultimately, reduce the time it takes to see and hear your child say this sound correctly. I recommend starting with a quick look at the Speech Buddies video on L as it is a great way to first visualize for yourself what the tongue needs to do to hit the Speech Buddies Tool for L’s target and to say this sound correctly.
Being the proud father of two kids and the husband of someone who is very talented musically (sadly I cannot call musicality one of my talents), I have had the pleasure of plenty of children’s songs. Singing is not only fun and can connect your next generation to a vital cultural thread, but singing has been at least anecdotally linked to the development of early language skills in children. But since we happen to live in a monolingual American English household, just about all of the songs we’ve sung to and with our children, have been in English. In the vein of being a hardcore language geek who deeply appreciates language diversity, I thought it’d be fun and enriching to provide you with a compendium of classic children’s songs in a variety of the world’s languages. As you sample the linked song clips, try to identify themes in the tunes, as they compare to the songs you came to love as a child and may also sing to your children. These could be melodic themes, onomatopoeia, alliteration, or content themes. Or, you could simply just enjoy them!
