A guide to one of the most requested ARM goals for children — Speech Clarity
Many parents hope and expect that speech therapy once or twice a week is the answer to getting their child to have clear speech. That is simply impossible; you child is learning how to speak in ever interaction with your and his other life partners. Also, he will learn how to speak clearly from how you talk with him and how frequently he practices his speech hear speech that he can try to do. Any speech therapist with much experience should agree with this. And for children with serious speech problems such as ones with DS , Autism or Apraxia, you had better find a therapist with years of experience with your kind of child. Simple therapy approaches will not do it. In fact you are the answer. Don’t give the job up to someone once a week. If a therapist will help, fine but you have hundreds of times more time and impact on your child’s speech. The following guide is for parents to use at home on a daily basis. You wouldn’t expect your child to become a pianist if he had one lesson a week but did not practice any other time. The same goes for speech, and the consequences are much greater. We must support our children’s early attempts and not give him the idea that he is making mistakes. That will drive him away from talking and delay the progress seriously. PLEASE KEEP THIS GUIDE NEAR YOU AND REALIZE THAT YOU ARE YOUR CHILD’S BEST SPEECH TEACHER. SPEECH CLARITY- –How to help your child be understood more.
What is it? Children usually begin to speak in ways that are at first understandable to no one but very familiar persons. Such performances are not “mistakes”; they are normal steps in the difficult process of coordinating many muscles. This process is often very difficult for children with language delays or ones with little practice talking. Until the child is a habitual communicator with words, it is very important not to discourage the child from saying words in any ways he can.
Consequently, unclear speech should not be seen as “error’ but rather as natural developmental steps that you can support by showing the child the next step. Unclear speech is an attempt to do what the child physically can do at the moment. Unclear speech is like a missed attempt at a basket in basketball-and as Michael Jackson says, ” I’d never be as good as I am if I had not missed over a million baskets.
Speech clarity takes a great deal of motor practice, more for some children than for others. It is critical to accept any attempts at speech at first and to not discourage a child from speaking with negative feedback or attempts to get him to do things he is not ready to do.
Why is it important? While it is eventually important for a child to speak in ways that most people understand, it is equally important not to expect or pressure the child to speak in ways he is currently not able to do. Children develop speech in three general stages.
First, the child has “self-talk” in which he makes sounds as he plays and practices muscle co ordinations mainly for the sensation value. These sounds may or may not refer to real words and they may or may not be used to communicate with others. It is important for partners to respond to these early sounds so that the child does more of them and so that he learns that sounds will be the most effective way to communicate.
Second, the child has “family or idiosyncratic speech” which includes attempts to communicate that usually only his family understands. This speech can be considered the child’s own “language” and the family’s main job are to translate the child’s language into theirs. This is done by simply giving the child a word in the mother tongue in response to his idiosyncratic production. In this way the child hears a new way to talk without feeling that he had done something wrong.
Third, the child then develops “conventional” speech, which are words that most of the community can understand. For language- delayed children, this stage may take years. The key is to realize that each child speaks as he can at the moment, and if partners want different speech, it is up to them to show the child what to say next and not to respond in ways that often discourage the child from talking.
What can you do? The most important thing to do to help a child develop clear speech is to respond to all of his speech attempts, however unclear, so that he keeps talking. If we make talking work for the child by asking him to repeats or by not responding, he is likely to talk less and then get less of the practice he needs to speak more clearly.
Three strategies are very helpful to improve your child’s speech clarity, responding and translating and making talking playful.
- Responding. Respond to all of your child’s speech attempts, even if it means imitating unusual productions. Many partners find it awkward at first to imitate a child’s unclear sounds, but many have found that imitation keeps the child talking more so that he has more practice. If a child stops talking all opportunity to improve speech ends. The more a child speaks interactively, regardless of the clarity, the clearer his speech will become.
- Translating. Regardless of how your child pronounces a word, it is an important accomplishment for him and should be supported with a word that translates his language into yours. If he says “akaba” when entering the bathtub, simply say “bathtub ” clearly.
- Being playful with sounds. Adults often take talking so seriously with language delayed children that children do not enjoy the process. Consequently, they stay away and talk less when it is seen as failure and work. Many parents have found that children talk more clearly when they treat sounds as the child’s most important toy that can be exchanges back and forth as balls are exchanged when a child wants to play ball. The more you think of sounds and words as playthings, the more the child will participate and practice his speech.
Measurable outcomes: ( for use at home and in intervention plans)
- The child will make new sounds and combinations of sounds.
- The child will change his sounds to be closer to his partner’s productions.
- The child’s speech will be clearer to his family.
- The child’s speech will be clearer to strangers.
- The child will imitate the speech of others more closely.