What is an Articulation Disorder?
This week, we are taking a fresh and in-depth look at articulation disorders in children, including trying to decipher what is fact, fiction and frankly what you need to know about articulation disorders in relation to normal speech development milestones.
What Causes Stuttering and Can It Be Fixed? Image Courtesy of Shutterstock
Stuttering is a speech disorder in which words, sounds or syllables are repeated or last longer than normal. Stuttering, also called stammering or disfluency, causes a break or a pause in the flow of speech. Young children may stutter when they are first developing their speech and language skills. The stuttering occurs when their speech skills cannot keep up with what they are trying to say. Stumbling over words or speech affects about five percent of children, and generally lasts for several weeks or several years. Most children outgrow this stuttering phase within their first four years.
Activities such as blowing bubbles are excellent low cost speech therapy activities that you can do at home!
Speech and language disorders affect children of all races and social-economic groups. If left untreated, speech disorders can affect a child’s ability to interact and communicate with others. Parents are constantly searching for low cost speech therapy tools and ideas. But where do you begin? The Internet is jam-packed with tools, gadgets, whistles and websites that can be confusing and misleading for parents. We have narrowed down a few low cost speech therapy ideas for you to try. Of course, we always recommend that you check in with your pediatrician or licensed speech therapist first before taking on any therapies on your own.
What Are Some Common Articulation Disorders? Image Courtesy of Gillberg Centre.
Speech and language articulation is the process by which a person forms words. This is done with different parts of the mouth, jaw, tongue, lips, palate and teeth. A child is considered to have an articulation disorder is if he or she is unable to produce the right sounds to communicate clearly and effectively. Articulation disorders are generally characterized by substituting one sound for another (wide for ride), omitting a particular sound (ban for band) or distorting a sound (sip for ship). Young children often make speech errors, however if these continue past a certain age, they are considered articulation disorders. Children by the age of 8 should be able to produce all sounds in English correctly.
