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Speech issues
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Do any of you have experience working with children with speech issues? I’m trying to figure out how much to intervene, correct, or model and how much to just ignore.
The children in question are not mine, they attend my dayhome. S. is an almost 10 year old girl, M. is her almost 9 year old brother. Both have what I would call very immature speech patterns, to the point that I often have trouble even understanding what they are trying to say. Their pronunciation, epecially S.’s, is very unclear and muddled. They have trouble with grammar, sentence structure, verse tense and agreement, and just generally use common phrases incorrectly.
Here is one example from this morning. The kids were playing hide and seek and M. was trying to direct my son to look under a large pillow. He said “Under dat ding!” then after my son looked M. continued “I think it was under dere, dat’s why I sawed it move.” What he meant was “Under that thing! I thought she (S.) was under there, because I saw it (the pillow) move.”
I’m not sure the actual cause of the speech challenges. These two children have a multitude of issues (educational, emotional, social, you name it). Their home environment is chaotic at best, and they are in specialized classes at school. I want to find out what kind of speech therapy, if any, they are receiving, but that may take a while. I don’t even see their mom more than once a week.
In the meantime, I’m pondering how I can be helpful, beyond providing a stable and supportive enviroment for 3 hours a day. I’m just not sure what approach to take. With my 2 year old, who is learning many of the same things that the older 2 children need to learn, I can just model the correct way to say what she is trying to say. She repeats after me, and we move on. S. and M., however, just get confused when I do that (which I tend to do out of habit from dealing with little ones so much.)
I’d love to hear about any experience or information you have in this area that might help me help them.
Thanks.
Joanne
I don’t have any experience with grammar/sentence structure…sorry. As far as speech, though, my 6YO has speech delays and has been in speech therapy since he was three. He is actually a lot more intelligible than what you are describing. He may finish with speech this year.
Replacing the “th” sound with “d” or “v” is actually what we are working on right now. One of his favorite things to do to “practice” his speech sounds is playing “Go Fish” with his speech words. What I do is go to this site:
http://mommyspeechtherapy.com/?page_id=55
I print out double of the worksheet for the target sound, then cut and glue several of the words with that sound on index cards (doubles, of course). We play a typical game of “Go Fish” with those cards – which takes about 5 minutes. We usually play 2-3x/day and, by doing that, he practices the specific sound 50+ times in a day. If we play every day for a few minutes I notice really rapid improvement in his speech.
If you can develop a working relationship with one of their specialized teachers at school I’m sure it would benefit them immensely. My son’s speech therapist is thankful to have a good working relationship with me because she said that most kids don’t practice at all at home, and therefore it is very difficult for the children to progress and to maintain any skills they have picked up in a weekly session with her.
Are they getting speech therapy at school? I would hope so. I’m not sure how to correct the grammar issues, but my son has struggled with letter pronounciations. When he had trouble with th’s, I simply told him where to place his tongue (touching teeth) and wrote out a bunch of sentences with th’s in them and tried to spend about 5-10 min. daily on them. That worked well. He still struggled with disfluency, l’s, r’s, sh’s, so we’ve just finished up some sessions with a Speech Therapist that has helped. We spend time each day working on words with the letters he struggles with, he reads me a passage and I correct any problems, we have a conversation or narration and I correct him when needed. It only takes about 10-15 min. a day, but he’s shown a lot of improvement. The therapist helped show me where tongue placement is, etc. But I think there’s a guide you can buy…it’s been mentioned here but I forget the name. If you’re interested, I can try to search for it. HTH some:) Gina
P.S. It’s different for me since it’s my own kid, but I found it best to try to keep most speech corrections during this time frame and not constantly be correcting him….though I will occasionally tell him to slow down or re-say a word. When we first started this, I was very hesitant to tell him he had an issue….afraid he’d get self-conscious. But the therapist said kids usually know and it’s best to be upfront (kindly) about it.
I’ve been using this with my daughter with a lot of success. It’s free.
I think it is hard to address the problem if you don’t know the cause. My son was tested for so many things because of his speech promlems, I didn’t even know those things can cause speech problems. Depending on what causes it, there are different approaches. For instance some children have speech problems because of auditory problems or breathing/lung problems. It would be good to find out a little bit more about them in order fo you to help them effectively.
My son went to speech classes in pre-k and K. The therpists were very kind and easy to work with and let me sit in on some sessions so I could learn how to help him at home. You do need to know the correct placement of the tongue to make the correct sound and stressing it, focusing on one sound at a time and reviewing past sounds. He had a mirror to look into so he could see where he was putting his tongue. One sound that is odd to me is L. You don’t just make the l sound like you do to teach reading. You curve the tongue up and say “ul”, with a short u sound. After a few “ul” then “ul-amp” for lamp, “ul”, “ul-ock” for lock.
As far as using improper grammar, I was encouraged by the therapist to correct him anytime it sounded wrong to me. He said it wrong, I say it right, and he repeats what I said correctly.
We had several hearing tests done at the doctor’s office and all were okay, so we never knew the cause for his delay, but he was discharged in middle K. He is grade 2 now and I still correct him sometimes and tell him to “use your good ul sound, and try again”, in an encouraging voice. But overall his speech is okay now.
We also used some dvd’s called Baby Babble from speech pathologists which seemed to help:
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Babble-Made-Speech-Therapists/dp/B000Y1NNH2/ref=pd_bxgy_mov_img_b
But it is probably too young for the kids you are trying to help. These dvds also teach some basic sign language, which helps improve speech and reduce frustration when trying to communicate.
We are now using Signing Time dvds to teach ASL as foreign language in our hs.
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