Speech Sounds
What do speech-language pathologists do? They assess and treat communication, cognition, and swallowing disorders.
As a speech pathologist who has always worked with kids, a big part of my job has been improving developing children’s speech sound productions. ‘Speech’ is in the job title, it’s what most people associate with SLPs, and depending on the population one treats it can be a large portion of the caseload.
Articulation skills and expressive language skills are separate, but also connected. Since producing speech is the most complex fine motor act humans perform it takes years to master intelligible connected speech. It starts with vocalizing, then babbling, next there’s single words, and eventually sentences. As kids express their needs and ideas more and more their speech mechanism gets the skilled practice necessary to sound like others and be understood. Just like any skill, the more we talk the better we get at talking.
It’s common for preschool and young school-age children to receive speech therapy for delayed speech sound production skills. Articulation treatment is most successful when kiddos can discriminate targets sounds from error sounds, visually attend to correct model (i.e., the therapist’s mouth), tolerate light tactile cues on face, and drill practice targets in engaging tasks.
In the beginning of my career providing articulation treatment was challenging and cognitively demanding. My first client who demonstrated Childhood Apraxia of Speech – a speech sound disorder – taught me so much that I feel like he is still a part of most of my sessions. Cues and strategies I perfected during his course of care continue to help current clients. It’s second nature at this point, so my brain can sort through other clinical decisions as I provide effective and fun support for speech sounds.
While many language and thinking abilities are flexible, articulation is correct or distorted. With specialized training and years of application, it’s rewarding to help clients say familiar things in an intelligible, and eventually, correct manner.
