Understanding your child’s speech can feel like second nature to you as a parent. After all, you’ve spent so much time with your child, it makes sense that you would understand their unique way of communicating. But when other people struggle to understand your child, it can be frustrating. Why does this happen? And more importantly, how can you help?
Hi, I’m JP Alters. I’m the Director of Speech Therapy here at Rebound Physical Therapy.
Today, let’s explore how articulation impacts clarity in speech and how the right support can make all the difference.
What Is Articulation?
A common word that we use here in speech therapy is articulation. And articulation means speech sound development. It refers to how well you can produce clear, understandable speech sounds.
Why is it hard for others to understand your child? Well, simply put, it’s that you understand your child’s speech sound substitutions.
Children who struggle with certain sounds will substitute one sound for another. Many times, the parent that spends the most time with your child has a better understanding of your child’s intended messages because you’ve learned their substitutions.
How Pediatric Speech Therapy Improves Articulation for Clearer Speech
Many parents ask, how can a speech therapist improve your child’s articulation or speech development? Well, we utilize quite a few things:
- Exercises to strengthen the muscles used for speech, i.e., the lips and tongue
- Visual cues through pictures to encourage more practice of speech sounds
- Modeling from the speech therapist on proper articulation
- Tactile cues to teach your child how to hold their articulators (their tongue, lips, etc.) where they’re supposed to be to make speech sounds
We facilitate the development of sounds first, and then we branch that to words, phrases, sentences, and even into connected speech.
How You Can Help Your Child Improve Their Articulation at Home
Education and training is imperative for parents, and I think that’s what empowers our parents at Rebound to help their children at home. We want you to be in your child’s therapy sessions, and we want you to be able to leave with therapy strategies to take beyond our walls to use at home. That is one way that we’re going to try to empower you.
The biggest thing that you can do to start, is just restate your child’s words and phrases and sentences using precise speech sounds. Modeling correct speech in this way can help a ton.
But if that’s not helping much, seek a speech therapist to determine if the errors are developmental. There are times that you may be trying hard to get your child to say the sound correctly, but the truth of it is they’re not developmentally ready.
It’s like a kid on a bike. You wouldn’t put a kid on a bike and send them down the hill without training wheels. With speech, we have to wait for those motor skills to be strengthened and developed enough that your child’s articulation skills can be accurate and precise.
Reach Out to Rebound for Expert Pediatric Speech Therapy
Here at Rebound, we do desire to partner with you for the benefit of both you and your child. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, just feel free to reach out to us for a free speech screening. You can give us a call at (785) 271-5533 and we’ll be happy to help.
