Oral Motor

April 18, 2009

Oral motor therapy is FUN! This type of therapy is used to promote strength, coordination, control and range of motion of the muscles of the mouth. Children with speech, phonological, feeding and swallowing disorders as well as children with apraxia benefit greatly from oral motor therapy. By using items children love, we are able to get into their mouths and provide input and stimulation to the cheeks, lips, tongue, jaw and palate. These critical, intricate muscle groups begin working together to improve speech sounds, improve eating and drinking skills, increase effective swallowing, and decrease drooling amongst a host of other benefits.

Apraxia

April 17, 2009

Apraxia of speech is a motor based speech disorder. Children with apraxia have difficulty planning and executing the movements needed to produce intelligible (understandable) speech.

Characteristics of apraxia include:

Inconsistent speech sound productions: your child may say a sound or word correctly once, but incorrectly the next time he uses that same sound or word.

“Groping”: your child’s mouth may move as if it is searching for the correct way to make a sound or say a word, but the actual sound/word is never produced.

Distorted vowel production: your child may say words that sound nothing like what they should. For example, the word “red” may sound like “rode”.

Difficulties imitating speech sounds/words: your child may be able to say “ball”, but has great difficulty imitating that same word when someone asks him to do so.

Difficulties performing movements on request, yet able to produce that same movement involuntarily: your child may have no ability to stick out his tongue while imitating someone performing that movement, but he is able to stick his tongue out to lick an ice cream cone.

Apraxia may also be called verbal apraxia, developmental apraxia of speech, or verbal dyspraxia.

Articulation

April 13, 2009

Articulation delays and disorders are the incorrect pronunciation of speech sounds. These speech sounds in error may be omitted, distorted, substituted or have additional sounds added to them to cause your child’s speech to be difficult to understand. These errors will be classified on the degree of intelligibility of your child’s speech; that is, how easy or difficult it is for your child to be understood. Children with articulation concerns consistently produce the same speech sound incorrectly in most or all words.

Speech sounds are developmentally acquired and not all errors will require immediate treatment. Your child’s therapist will be able to identify and explain the hierarchy of speech sound acquisition and develop a developmentally appropriate treatment plan for your child.