As the fall and back-to-school season progress, your child’s school-based speech therapy services are likely in full swing. At Speech Buddies, we believe parents should play an active and consistent role in their child’s therapy journey. Whether you’re new to therapy or have experience, this blog post offers a roadmap to help parents stay engaged, informed, and empowered throughout the process.
It All Starts with the Evaluation
For those new to therapy, the process starts with an evaluation to assess your child’s current skills and how they compare to age-matched peers. After receiving the evaluation report, schedule a call with the clinician to ensure you understand and agree with the findings. The report should provide a clear picture of your child’s strengths and areas for growth.
Ask the clinician to clarify the top priority goals and how they will be addressed, including whether they will focus on one or two goals at a time or multiple. Also, ask which goals are suitable for you to work on at home.
Materials!
Once your child’s therapy goals are clear and they’ve built a good relationship with their therapist, ask for simple, affordable materials to use at home, such as games, toys, or exercises. Choose fun items that make speech therapy enjoyable—these are likely the same activities their therapist uses to keep them engaged. Using familiar materials at home will help reinforce therapy goals. Let your child help pick the materials so they feel involved in the process. If cost is a concern, look into non-profits like Small Steps in Speech, which offer small grants to support therapy services or materials.
Progress Reports
School districts usually provide progress notes every six months or more often. Be sure to review these reports carefully, just like any other school report. If something doesn’t match what you’re seeing at home, or if you think there’s room for improvement, reach out to your child’s therapist and schedule a quick meeting. With over 20 years of experience, I can assure you that these conversations are important for your child’s progress and won’t be seen as overly demanding.
Achieving Goals and Sustaining Progress
Happily, your child will make significant progress and move on to more challenging and meaningful goals. As a parent or family member, you are a key player in solidifying those gains and making them habitual in your child’s speech and language. Think of your therapist as the leader, and you as the one who supports and strengthens the skills they have taught. While this is a vast topic covered in our Speech Buddies blog series, the underlying recommendation is to be consistent in follow-up exercises. Even a small daily commitment, like five minutes almost every day, can significantly help maintain the skills learned during therapy. Find a part of your family routine—like your commute, dinner time, or a homework reward—and designate it as your “speech practice time.” The key is to make it both convenient and consistent.
Congratulations on starting your child’s school-based speech therapy! These services are key to your child’s development and play an important role in their future. While the impact of therapy can vary, following the tips above will help you get the most out of it and have a positive effect on your child’s growth.
Gordy Rogers, M.S. CCC-SLP, & Speech Buddies Co-Founder
If a child shows concerning speech patterns, there is usually no clear cause. The vast majority of speech challenges related to development are what’s called idiopathic–they just happen. Sometimes, specific diagnoses can directly and casually affect speech challenges. Medical intervention can address these challenges, followed by intervention by a licensed speech-language pathologist.
Below, I summarize some of the most common issues related to otolaryngology (ear-nose-throat) that can present. Some may be present at birth and may be apparent or reveal themselves later in development; most issues appear in late toddlerhood or pre-school years. The goal of this post is to inform and empower parents and caregivers in a child’s development. However, it’s important to note that good care starts with qualified healthcare professionals.
Enlarged adenoids and tonsils
The adenoids, also known as pharyngeal tonsils, are bundles of lymphatic tissue that sit in the space between the oral and nasal cavities (the nasopharynx). When, after an infection like the common cold or an ear infection, the adenoids become inflamed (usually with pus–gross; I know), they can block proper nasal breathing. This issue can affect multiple vital systems in a developing child, but we’ll stick with speech here.
Often occurring in the later toddler years or during pre-school, enlarged adenoids can have varying effects on a child’s speech. Sometimes, there is no impact, while in others, it can be profound and require immediate attention. Speech affects include hyponasal speech, where children sound stuffed up. This can lead to a habitual open-mouth breathing posture, which can lead to changes in how a child articulates speech sounds.
The adenoids are the most likely to affect a child’s speech development when inflamed, but the palatine and lingual tonsils are also important to consider. When you open your mouth wide, you can see the palatine tonsils on the back sides. The lingual tonsils, not visible, are at the base of your tongue (see picture). These two tonsils affect speech production only when inflamed.
Should you suspect that your child’s adenoids and/or tonsils are affecting speech development, the first course of action would be to consult with your pediatrician or pediatrician otolaryngologist. A course of antibiotics and/or oral steroids can solve the problem. In rarer cases, surgery is required. Urgency is crucial, as delays can worsen speech problems. Please also see a previous blog post on this subject. (Tonsils & Adenoids)
I’ll be brief and direct you to this blog post (Is My Child Tongue-Tied?) as this subject is important and a current topic of discussion. There has been an uptick in the number of tongue tie surgeries being performed. The procedure is often quick, straightforward and painless when performed by a qualified provider such as an otolaryngologist or specialized pediatric dentist.
Parents should understand that the severity of tongue tie can affect speech and other oral behaviors like feeding and swallowing. I have seen unsubstantiated (and wild) claims from certain providers stating that tongue tie surgery can improve symptoms of autism and stuttering. Healthcare consumers must tread cautiously and remain vigilant against such claims, ensuring they comprehend the motives of those advocating for this procedure. Throughout my nearly twenty-year clinical practice, I have observed the changing opinions of clipping the lingual frenulum, with periods of powerful encouragement followed by periods of strong discouragement. Having a perspective that attitudes can swing based on recent evidence is crucial.
That said, tongue tie can have a negative impact on a range of critical behaviors, like suckling/breastfeeding, oral feeding, swallowing and speech. Any situation that limits a child’s tongue range of motion can affect functioning. As with adenoids and tonsils issues, the first line of defense, so to speak, is to consult with your pediatrician and ask him/her for a specialist referral.
Lip tie (sometimes referred to as bugloss)
As the name implies, lip tie occurs when the labial frenulum limits the range of motion of the lips. This condition less commonly affects speech development and production. When it does, the lip tie is usually quite severe. However, certain speech sounds require precise lip movements and lip tie. Again, as with tongue tie, should you suspect this is occurring in your child, your first course of action would be to contact your pediatrician.
Velopharyngeal insufficiency
Separating the mouth and nose is necessary for numerous reasons, too many to detail here. Compromising this separation can affect speech (and other functions). The hard palate, a piece of the maxilla (upper jaw) bone that fuses while a child is in utero, separates the mouth (oral cavity) and nose (nasal cavity). Sometimes, the incomplete fusion results in a cleft palate. Pediatricians almost always diagnose this condition at birth. They have a comprehensive, stepwise plan to treat and facilitate your child’s proper development of structures and functions.
Sometimes, however, an anatomical issue may be less apparent (i.e., a submucosal cleft). In these cases, a child’s voice might sound unusual, often hypernasal where air is escaping out of the nose when it shouldn’t. This issue requires a full clinical workup and diagnosis from a specialized physician. The course of treatment and speech therapy may vary for a congenital palate issue.
Finally, a situation can arise where velopharyngeal insufficiency occurs because the soft palate cannot function or may have malformations or injuries. The soft palate is a flap of muscle tissue between the nasal and oral cavities that raises and lowers to open or close off the nasal cavity. Just as with hard palate issues, soft palate challenges can make a child’s speech hyponasal. If the challenge is anatomical, the pediatric otolaryngologist will again possess the best resources to chart a course of treatment.
With these conditions, time is of the essence! Children have what we call critical periods for specific skills, like speech. Their brains are most receptive to learning these skills during specific age ranges. For speech, this occurs from birth to around 8-9 years old. Although it’s possible for a child to develop crucial speech skills after age 8-9, progress might be slower and therapy programs more complex and challenging. No matter your concern, the first step is to get information from a local licensed medical or speech and language professional. At Speech Buddies, we would be honored to assist you!
Gordy Rogers, M.S. CCC-SLP, & Speech Buddies Co-Founder
As parents, my wife and I always try to perform cost-benefit analysis when our kids need professional or healthcare services. We all want the best for our children, but is that service worth the cost? This question often boils down to determining if it’s the right time for these services.
I’ll provide clarity on this important decision using an impactful research study. My goal is to help you better perform your own cost-benefit analysis when you feel your child may need a speech evaluation.
It’s important to understand that this article is devoted to speech clarity errors rather than language or cognitive development. I’m not addressing speech fluency here; one of the most common disorders being stuttering.
In 2018, two prominent Australian researchers and speech-language pathologists, Sharynne McLeod and Kathryn Crowe, published a highly influential study which looked into 27 major languages, on the ages that children are expected to acquire the speech sounds of their language.
Before this study was published, most speech pathologists relied on now fifty-year-old data to help determine whether the speech errors a child was making were age-appropriate (i.e. “normal” for that age group) or suggestive of a speech disorder. McLeod and Crowe’s data sent shockwaves through the world of speech pathology.
Speech pathologists thought that some of the trickiest-to-learn speech sounds can be misarticulated up to age 7, or even 8, without triggering a concern. The old data suggested therapists should recommend a “wait and watch” approach for a child who couldn’t pronounce [r] or [th] sounds at age 7.
One common issue is [th] and [r] are produced incorrectly in a 7-year-old that a good percentage of these children would spontaneously correct these speech errors without therapy.
McLeod and Crowe’s study examined many previous studies (termed a meta-analysis) and changed this thinking. They found that 90% of the speech sounds in a language should be acquired (i.e. correctly produced) by age 5! So whereas in years past, a 5 and a half-year old presenting with a challenge in saying his/her [s] and [sh] sounds might be told to wait a year before going to therapy, this new guidance would more strongly support intervening right away.
Each case is unique and is best informed by a comprehensive speech evaluation by a trained Pathologist. However, McLeod and Crowe’s work suggests a more proactive approach earlier in a child’s development. This applies broadly to children’s speech development as well.
Knowing language history, bilingualism, and family speech disorders is critical for clinical decision making. This boils down to a maxim: when in doubt, evaluate!
This study further underscores the potential urgency of the situation. The watchful waiting approach may actually be the best one, but you won’t know that without getting all the facts.
Best of luck in your family’s speech journey. Please share this article with someone who needs help with determining when the time is right for a professional speech evaluation.
By Gordy Rogers, M.S. CCC-SLP
**References “Children’s Consonant Acquisition in 27 Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Review” by Sharynne McLeod and Kathryn Crowe
The Covid pandemic brought an unprecedented staffing challenge across the entire American healthcare system. From hospitals, to outpatient private practices to schools, there aren’t enough speech pathologists to serve the demand for services that further exploded because of lockdowns.
We are seeing research studies come out now that confirm how lockdowns and remote learning set children back in their speech development.
While this might explain why your child hasn’t been receiving the school-based or clinic-based services, it does nothing to allay your concerns as a parent.
But with the help of Speech Buddies®, you can take your child’s speech development into your own hands.
Let me explain.
Speech Buddies are a set of patented, clinically proven hand-held devices that help a child feel correct tongue placement for those most difficult speech sounds that typically develop in late pre-school and early school years.
Since 2007? thousands of speech pathologists and tens of thousands of parents and children have successfully used them. See our testimonials here. Speech Buddies takes the guesswork out of eliciting speech sounds and speed up a child’s acquisitions of these often difficult-to-learn speech sounds.
The elegance of Speech Buddies as a speech therapy solution lies both in its efficacy and flexibility.
We always recommend having your child evaluated and treated by a licensed speech pathologist for a diagnosed speech challenge, especially if you believe your child’s speech challenge may be more than just of mild severity.
But, Speech Buddies may provide a critical bridge to expedited care amid this staffing situation. You may have an “ah ha moment” within the first few minutes of using the device and our extensive library of training videos and lesson plans will give you a head start on your child’s treatment regimen.
Because we specifically designed Speech Buddies tools for each speech sound (please see descriptions of each device: R, S, SH, L, CH), you only need to purchase the device(s) that apply to your child’s situation. So, when you’re finally moved off the waiting list for services, you could be farther along in the therapy process.
Depending on the speech therapy staffing predicament in your local area, Speech Buddies may also offer a fantastic option for those who would opt for out-of-network services, resources permitting, while potentially reducing the overall cost of those services.
Out-of-network providers almost never have extensive waiting lists given very limited or unavailable funding coverage.
You should be able to get in for an evaluation and services without being placed on a waiting list. If Speech Buddies work for your child’s speech treatment regimen, our tools are proven to reduce the time in therapy for certain speech sound disorders. By accessing a key sensory modality in learning, the sense of touch, Speech Buddies can help achieve a quicker learning breakthrough.
Speech Buddies hand-held tool empowers both the parent and child to recreate the speech therapy session in your own home while building confidence and enabling critical parent involvement in therapy. We also offer a free directory, Speech Buddies Connect, of SLP’s on our website.
Parents are powerless over staffing challenges across healthcare services but, you have access the clinically proven options.
Your child’s speech development is important and can be complex. If you ever have questions about Speech Buddies as a specific solution for your child’s situation, please contact us today!
We’re happy to hear your child’s situation and point you toward actionable solutions.
How can you tell if your child has a speech delay? And what can you do about it? We get a lot of questions from parents and caregivers about identifying and treating speech delay in children. First, we want to commend you for taking the time to research this important topic! The more you understand about speech and language development, the sooner you will be able to recognize any sort of speech delay and get back on track.
First, it’s important to understand that a child’s speech and language development is continually evolving. Professional speech-language pathologists use age-based developmental milestones to assess whether or not a child is at a developmentally appropriate level. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with these milestones as they relate to your child’s age and stage. If you do believe that your child may have a speech delay – or even if you just want to work on developing communication skills at home – here are our top tips:
1. Reading Helps Speech Delay
Children are so inquisitive and love to explore ideas in books. Around the age of 18 months, you can begin letting your child pick the books that he or she wants to “read.” Don’t worry if it’s the same book over and over again. While this might get boring and repetitive for you, your child benefits from reinforcing the same concepts. Read and read often! Your child will benefit from hearing new words and listening to the cadence of how stories are told.
These are our favorite books for speech delay in children:
Talk With Me – Designed for children with speech delay or early talkers. This book uses popular nursery rhymes to encourage first words. Helpful hints guide parents along the way.
By Kimberly McCollister & Adrienne Penake. Reviewed by Kelsey Bailey, M.S. CCC-SLP.
Designed for parents concerned with speech delay. This books exposes your child to final consonants and encourages first words. Helpful to encourage talking through easy words, cute photos and repetition.
2. It’s not enough to “just read”
Ok, here’s a good one that seems to directly contradict #1. In addition to reading, you also want to make your child an active participant in the story. Sit with your child’s favorite book, point to the pictures, and ask your child what they see happening in the story. It doesn’t matter at all what they respond, or whether or not you can understand them. You want them to inquire and wonder and begin trying to communicate with you. Don’t try and use these times as a chance to “correct” or refine your child’s interpretation. You just want to get them talking.
3. Sing! Songs for Speech Delay
Even if children can’t speak fluently, they might be able to express themselves through music and singing. Sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, or “Rain, Rain Go Away.” Pause at the end of the line and see if your child can fill in the next word. See if they will sing with you. And then celebrate! Any utterance is great progress.
If you do suspect a speech delay:
By the age of two, children who are not meeting developmental milestones very well may have a speech delay. At this point, seeking professional help from a certified speech-language pathologist in your area is warranted. You’ll want to ask about screening for any medical conditions that may be interrupting speech development and get professional help in treating your child’s speech delay.
People often ask us how we decided to invent Speech Buddies tools. We thought you might be interested in this video from CBS SmartPlanet that was put together on Speech Buddies called “Medical device takes the guess work out of speech therapy.” It shows part of our design and development process and details how Speech Buddies tools have been incorporated into a speech therapy regimen to reduce overall treatment time. Particularly for that stubborn R sound! Take a look and let us know what you think.
From birth, children’s developmental capacities are constantly growing and maturing. Speech provides all of us with imperative tools for learning and interacting with others. Uncovering speech issues early on in children can be beneficial for future emotional development. For some parents it may be difficult to decipher emotional signs, as opposed to physical signs correlated with speech or language complications. I spoke with child and adolescent psychotherapist, Irena Kenny about the importance of speech in a child’s everyday life, as well as emotional and social obstacles, which might arise if a child is struggling with self expression.
Q: How important are speech, language and communication skills for a child’s social and emotional development?
A: Speech and language are vital for the development of emotional and social skills in children. Communication is one of the most important developmental tasks, which takes place during early childhood development. It is then, children begin to form their initial understanding of the world. Difficulty in the realm of language and communication during childhood can hinder a child’s ability to confidently express their ideas and observations of the world around them. Some younger children, who do not have a well developed fund of language have all of these ideas and observations of the world in their minds, but feel unable to make themselves understood to others. Older children who suffer from speech issues such as poor annunciation, stuttering, and other unclear speech patterns may isolate themselves, withdraw from peers, and avoid situations such as speaking out loud, or minimize verbal interactions with others. A few symptoms of difficulty to express one’s thoughts clearly at earlier stages of development are low frustration tolerance, emotional outbursts, and excessive shyness. However, there are also children whose speech might appear less advanced than that of their peers, but they seem unbothered and confident.
Q: How do speech and language challenges affect academic progress?
A: Speech or some forms of linguistic expression are important for academic success; this is because, reading, writing and verbal apprehensions are essential elements of the entire learning process. When a child begins school they start to observe their surroundings and socialize predominantly with kids their own age. At this point they begin to notice a difference in their own speech compared to their classmates. For children with speech issues, it may seem majority of their peers have the ability to express themselves in a more articulate, more easily understood fashion. This realization of sounding different can have an emotional effect, ultimately leading to lower confidence, potentially causing lower class performance. But again, while some children become overly frustrated, others may not have any awareness of their speech issue. However, for some of the more self- conscious kids, rejection and teasing by peers may cause all energy to be expended on dealing with the social aspect of functioning and little energy is left to be put toward academic growth . For others, the need to avoid dealing with uncomfortable interpersonal situations can lead to isolation and possibly focusing heavily on the academic growth whilst inadvertently neglecting the social growth and development.
Q: When should speech and language enrichment take priority over other enrichment activities?
A: If you ever feel that either speech or language (either receptive or expressive) seem to negatively affect your child’s ability to fully enjoy and participate in daily life, you should consider contacting a specialist. If a child is constantly struggling, due to speech related issues and does not seem to be making any progress, it is important to intervene and find the appropriate help best suited for you and your child. As a parent, I feel it is important to remember there is a range within each and every age group, and anxiously comparing your child to those of your peers does not always provide a clear cut sign of an issue. If you are uncertain or concerned, speak to your child’s teacher or pediatricians, who are qualified to advise you about what is and isn’t developmentally appropriate and together you can explore your concerns. If necessary they will help with making a referral to a Speech Therapist/Speech Language Pathologist, who will be able to determine the exact nature of your child’s speech related issue.
A: It is a joint effort when looking for a Speech Language Pathologist best suited for parent and child. Speaking with your child’s pediatrician for an initial evaluation may help determine whether there is an overall need for therapy. Your physician will be able to provide names of SLP’s they have worked with before. Another helpful tip is to speak to friends, family members, or parenting networks, such as Park Slope Parents about recommendations for clinicians who may have previously helped their child. Ultimately, you want to find an SLP who is knowledgeable, plus able to work comfortably and safely with your child in order to promote the mastery and fine tuning of new and existing speech and language tools.
Does growing up in a bilingual household create speech delays in children? The answer in the short term appears to be yes. Over the long term, however, children from bilingual homes tend to bounce back and may even derive special advantages from growing up in a household where both English and another language are spoken.
Tips For Raising a Bilingual Child
The key to raising a bilingual child is early exposure. The first few years of a child’s life represent the most rapid period in the growth of language pathways for speech development. Researchers say that a child’s brain in this critical period are like giant file cabinets that store up huge libraries of phonetic knowledge.
Scientists at Cornell University describe the acquisition of language as one of the greatest feats in human development. Their research indicates that an initial deficit in word learning or vocabulary was followed by “a fast pace of development,” ultimately reaching the same rate as children raised in monolingual homes. While many teachers and parents may be concerned that raising a child in a multilingual or bilingual household could be confusing, the scientific evidence indicates that bilingual children do not suffer from “language confusion, language delay or cognitive deficit.”
The Advantages of Raising a Bilingual Child
The cognitive advantages that your child will reap from bilingualism or multilingualism will likely aid his or her academic achievements later in life. In fact, far from causing problems in a child’s intellectual development, bilingual or multilingual kids enjoy special advantages over their monolingual peers, including easier access to other languages and cultures in ways that their peers often do not share. Moreover, exposure from birth to more than one language may yield the best results in achieving native-like proficiency.
Perhaps best of all, the children of bilingual or multilingual parents do not need to be “taught” a second language in order to get it right. Language learning is a complex process that children work through on a step-by-step basis, according to the sounds that they hear from their parents and overhear in other settings. So while exposure from birth to different languages is essential, moms and dads do not need to drill their children if they are developing normally. They can simply allow their kids to “discover” other languages on their own.
At the same time, however, parents can take concrete steps to facilitate multilanguage development that will enrich understanding and mastery, including:
Surrounding the child with conversations and social groups that utilize more than one language.
Exposing children to different languages through multilingual play groups.
Reading to and telling your child stories in different languages.
Another tip for parents raising the bilingual or multilingual child is for each parent to stick to his or her native tongue. This is known as the OPOL — “one parent, one language” — strategy for nurturing multilingual speech development. It’s based on the idea that kids will have an easier time if moms and dads consistently speak their own native tongues.
Of course, parents with children who have diagnosed language difficulties have special concerns regarding the effects of bilingualism. But research shows that, even among kids with language development challenges, it is possible for them to achieve bilingualism. According to one researcher, the evidence “suggests that…these children can acquire functional competence in two languages at the same time, within the limits of their impairment. Therefore, children with specific language impairment living in families where knowing two, or more, languages are useful and important, should be given every opportunity to acquire two languages.”
Parents who are unsure or have doubts should make sure that their children’s hearing has been tested; they should also consult an expert and remember that language development is a complex process that takes time and that some children will simply develop these skills at different rates.
Parenting is no easy feat, many times with our ever busy lives, the convenience of websites like WebMD seem to be the go-to diagnostic center, rather than the traditional “trip to the doctor’s office.” Deciphering whether or not your child has a speech or language challenge may not always be straightforward. I took the opportunity to sit down at Heights Pediatrics with Dr. Katerina Silverblatt, to address some of the most vital questions parents may ask themselves when it comes to discovering early signs of speech delay.
Some of the most rewarding and fun cases I have had the pleasure of being a part of have been with the youngest of children that speech pathologists serve—infants and toddlers, from birth to age 3. From one session to the next, I have witnessed profound changes in a child’s speech and language functioning, as well as in that child’s family’s sense of empowerment as they address the often formidable challenge of educating a child with developmental delays. Luckily, there is a government-sponsored program set up to help and it is called the Early Intervention (EI) program. Often, gathering information, directed, valuable information, is the first step to get your child the support he or she needs. This blog post is dedicated to providing some background to this vital program and to empower parents to access the services their child would deserve.
