This Speechinar includes a review of Speech Sound Disorders (Articulation and Phonology), development of speech sounds, and strategies you can use at home to help your child maintain and continue to make progress.
Slides used during the Speechinar:
Speechinar Transcript
Part 1
00:03
Ally Hutchison: Perfect. All right, guys, so welcome.
00:06
Ally Hutchison: My name is Allie Hutchison. I am the clinic operations manager at Better Speech. Today we have a wonderful SLP. Kyle OT He is here with us sharing an excellent presentation on articulation and phonology disorders. And this presentation today is going to be giving you a little bit of background about those disorders and what you can do to maintain and generalize your progress made in therapy. So generalizing that progress really just means in more layman terms, it just means how can you use those skills that you learn in therapy room out in the real world. And I just want to give you a little background on Kyle. So Kyle is a University of Mississippi undergrad. That's where he got his bachelor's degree. He got his master's degree at Governor State University.
00:54
Ally Hutchison: He's been an SLP for almost about five years now, and he specializes specifically in speech sound disorders, hence his decision to have his presentation today on this. Kyle actually was esteemed to win the 2022 SLP of the Year award for the school district that he currently works in. And he is currently a school SLP. So he definitely sees a lot of his caseload at school have these types of speech disorders. And in addition, he is a lovely SLP with the Better Speech community where he services adults and pediatric population. Kyle shared with me that he really enjoys helping people achieve their communication goals and giving a voice to those that don't always appear to have one.
01:37
Ally Hutchison: So with that said, I'm going to hand the mic over to Kyle and I'm going to turn off my mic and he's going to be leading us today in our presentation. Thanks so much.
01:45
Kyle Otte: Thanks, Ally. Appreciate it. Yeah, so like she said, my name is Kyle. I've been a speech language pathologist for about five years. So I'm really excited to be able to present this to you. So the main thing we're going to talk about today is articulation and phonology disorders and like Ali said, strategies to maintain and generalize progress made in therapy. So kind of I'm going to go do an overview of kind of what articulation and phonology disorders are and kind of some developmental milestones that we kind of use based on research to kind of decide whether it's a delay or disorder and then kind of strategies that therapists use in therapy setting. But what also things you can do at home to help maintain that therapy progress or even continue to make progress as well as just some general information for you to have.
02:34
Kyle Otte: I believe there's going to be some time at the end for questions, but you could always pop a question in the chat if you'd like. And we did say before we've had a couple of people join us since Ali said it, but we are recording this presentation. It's just for our members, just our members to be able to go back and look at it and to see. But it is just for members only. And for the most part, it's just going to be me talking. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. There is a storm coming through where I'm at right now. So if the Internet cuts out, just bear with me. All right, so we're going to go ahead and get started. Okay, so this speech sound disorders.
03:16
Kyle Otte: Speech sound disorders can be broken down into a number of different ways. So we have functional speech sound disorders, motor neurologic speech sound disorders, organic speech sound disorders, tensor perceptual speech sound disorders, as well as structural. The ones we are focusing on are on those functional, which there's really no known cause. And this is directly from the American Speech Language Appearing Association website. There's really no known cause for these speech disorders. They just happen. It's just the way our DNA formed itself, and that's just kind of the way it happens with some kids. So you have articulation and phonology. Articulation deals with that motor aspect, and then phonology is more of that linguistic aspect. So we're looking at the linguistic aspect of what's going on with their speech.
04:07
Kyle Otte: And again, over here we have the organic, which is motor, neurological, structural, and then sensory perceptual. We're more focused on this functional area. I don't know if we have any other speechners lined up dealing with more of these organic speech sound disorders, but at some point we probably will. So articulation. So according to the American Speech and Language Hearing Association, articulation disorders are focused on the individual sound errors. So that's whether they have a substitution or distortion. So a distortion would be more like the sound is close, like an S, but it'd be more lateralized, like a list, like a distortion would be more considered a list. So when we're looking at the development for just individual speech sounds, the most recent study that came out, which is in 2020 by Crow and McLoid, they kind of broke down.
05:03
Kyle Otte: They did basically, they took a bunch of studies and they combined them and took the mean age. And this graphic takes the mean age at which 90% of kids at that age produce that sound. So if you were to look, okay, my kid doesn't say S, okay, why go to S? And this graphic says five by five years old. So what that really means is that 90% of kids, the mean average of 90% of kids were able to produce that S sound by five years old. There are a number of things that come into play when looking at speech sound development and when a child should have a specific sound. This is just one way that we as speech therapists will look to evaluate a child and whether they are where they need to be.
05:50
Kyle Otte: We also use a bunch of different assessments that will give us a little bit more detail. But this is just kind of a general picture of kind of what we're looking at. Each spiritual therapist kind of does their own. This is the one I like to use because it's based on more of the most recent research and it has the mean age. And if you look at certain assessments, some assessments will give you a bar, right? Like they'll give you this giant chart of saying, okay, this is where kids start developing it. But some kids might not get it until they don't fully develop it, until they're nine. So it's a big range, so we don't really get hung up too much on the actual numbers. But it is a good idea to have a general knowledge of where your kid might be at.
06:36
Kyle Otte: And like I said, this is where 90% of kids are producing that 90% or greater, producing that sound at this age. All right, so phonology so I said we're talking about articulation and phonology and what the difference is. So like we said, articulation is really more dealing with that motor, specifically that motor aspect of it. And when we're looking at phonology, we're looking at phonological processes. And phonological processes are patterns of sound errors that typical developing children use to simplify adult speech. It's ways kids basically, they turn adult speech into they try to make adult speech. They're talking like it's their child talk. They don't always say things accurately, but it follows a rule. It's a pattern that kids will use to simplify adult speech. And up to a certain point, these patterns are normal, they're typical.
07:31
Kyle Otte: And then they have what we call the age of suppression, which is where the kids, they would stop using that process and they would start producing the adult like speech. So it becomes more of a phonological disorder when that pattern persists past that suppression age. So this next page here has some of the common phonological processes. So we have Fronting, which just means that the sound that the child is making is made in the back. The sound that's supposed to be made in the back of the mouth is made in the front of the mouth. So, for example, like tar for car or date for gate. So typically the mean age of suppression or elimination for this sound is four years old. We have stopping, which is when a fricative or African sound.
08:24
Kyle Otte: So we have more in more terms, that would be like a P or a T fricative. So those are sounds that have airflow through it. So you've got F and S sound, where they would replace that with a stop, like a P. So stops are sounds that really kind of just stop. They stop typically for some of these sounds. They're a little bit different as far as the age of suppression or the elimination. You've got F and S, which is around three years of age. They'll stop doing this. Z and V is around four. And then the sh and th sounds are around five years old. You have gliding, which is this is kind of one of the ones that we see a lot is those W's for ours or like lelo for yellow.
09:29
Kyle Otte: So we take those sounds and replace with a glide. So we take a liquid sound that's replaced with a glide, like rabbit for rabbit or WEG for leg or lelo for yellow. And this usually is fully suppressed by the age of six. Between ages of six and seven we have deafrocation, which is taking an African sound and replacing it with a fricative. Again, those are just speechy terms for specific sounds, which there'd be a whole other presentation on what kind of those sounds would look like or what those sounds are. But they'd be like ship for chip or job for job. That's usually suppressed about four years of age. We got cluster reduction. I see this a lot with kids, which a consonant cluster is basically when you have two consonants together like s and t for the word stop.
10:26
Kyle Otte: So for the word stop, they might say top instead of stop or for clean, they might say keen instead of the sound together. And so for s clusters. So for s in front of other sounds like stsl, SM. So that's usually around five years old and then other clusters between four years and around four years of age. Okay, I was looking at the chat. So there's primary progressive aphasia. Okay, so that's a little bit different of a speech. Aphasia is a little bit we're specifically talking about like an articulation disorder, but primary progressive aphasia is more of a cognitive communication deficit, not necessarily the focus of this topic. But now people with aphasia do some people with aphasia do present with what's called dysarthria, which is a different type of motor speech disorder.
11:27
Kyle Otte: But as far as this chart goes with we also have weak syllable deletion is another common phonological process, which is basically you've got the unstressed or weak syllable in a word and that weak stress is diluted. So basically a lot of kids like to go nana for banana, although my young children like to call their grandmother Nana, but we have or tato for potato. And this is usually suppressed around four years of age. And then this big one, which is probably the big one that I like to hit on home a lot with, this is what I see a lot, just with a lot of younger kids, they do what's called final constant deletion. And this really decreases the child's intelligibility.
12:10
Kyle Otte: And when I say intelligibility, I just mean how much of what you say they understand or how much of what they say you understand. When you have a sound at the end of the word, you can at least get a general idea of what a child or a kid is talking about. But when they take this sound off, it really does decrease. It has a major impact on their overall intelligibility. And so that's usually if a child is presenting with that's really the one I try to hit home on is because at least if I can get them to say a sound at the end, it doesn't always have to be the correct sound. I eventually want it to be the correct sound.
12:49
Kyle Otte: But if I can get them to have a sound at the end of the word, it makes what they're saying at least understandable. Because when a child has a hard time communicating and they don't understand them, they can't get their point across. They know what they want to say, but they can't get it out and you don't know what they want to say, it becomes frustrating for you and for them. So this is the one I like to really target, is spinal constant deletion if they present with it. When we talk about treatment for speech sound disorders, so we kind of broke it down. We're focusing on two different types of speech sound disorders. They're all under the umbrella of speech sound disorders. We had articulation and phonological disorders.
13:31
Kyle Otte: So for speech sound disorder treatment, we like to look at articulation approaches which focus on that motor aspect. We look at their voice, whether the sound is a voice sound or a voiceless sound. So that's whether your vocal cords basically are vibrating or not place so where the sound is being made and then kind of the manner in which it's made. And it's kind of more targeting muscle memory. With the phonological approach, you might be focusing on the linguistic aspects. So how does that their changes in the word change the meaning, change that meaning or change the whole word altogether? And so you can look at that approach and then a lot of times because it is sometimes really hard to tease apart because you can have both phonological errors as well as just regular articulation errors.
14:29
Kyle Otte: So where there's just substitution errors that don't necessarily specifically follow that pattern. So a lot of times we'll do both. We'll try to do whatever is going to work with that kid. So it's very individually based. That's why it's therapy. Because it's based on what's going to work for that child or young adult. So a lot of times I do both depending on what's going on with the kid. So kind of and I'm going pretty fast here, we have an hour. So at home with the littles first, when we're looking at kind of practicing stuff, have you asked your therapist so what sounds or patterns you could work on at home?
15:21
Kyle Otte: And I have on there that practice doesn't always make perfect because if they're not ready to practice that sound and they're continuing to practice it the wrong way, it's just going to continue to build them that bad habit. So unless the speech therapist says yes, they have this. They know how to fix this on their own. They don't need me to tell them what to do or they don't need you to tell them what to do. Then it's a good time to start practicing it. So if you're wondering, okay, what sounds should I practice at home? Definitely ask the speech therapist that's working with you or your kid to see what sounds they think you're ready to practice with because you don't want to be practicing it the wrong way and building in a bad habit.
16:02
Kyle Otte: So we have also, as part of your membership, you have access to the Better Speech Practice Library, where your speech therapist can assign you practices, but you can access that through your dashboard. Another fun activity that I like to do with some of my kids that are in the Learning to Read kind of age is doing some rhyming activities because it's kind of fun. And so you get them to think of a rhyming word. So say they're working on the book sound, and so you could have them say bat and then have them think, okay, well, what are some words that rhyme? And then if they have that concept of what rhyming is, then you can have them go back and forth between that word and it becomes kind of a game where you're saying, okay, bat, cat, bat, cat, bat, map.
16:53
Kyle Otte: And so you're getting that practice, but then you're also getting these really good skills of some phonological awareness skills of that rhyming, which is good, and being able to play with sounds. Because when you're a young kid and you're learning to read, having a speech sound disorder can have a really big impact on their learning to read. So we want to make sure that we're addressing those areas too. So we kind of want to watch for that as well. So that's some stuff you can do with the littles one thing that I always like to talk about is repeating and over exaggerating articulation or mispronounced words. So you want to over exaggerate kind of the pronunciation of that word. So if we're saying tat and they keep going tat, you want to really because the bilabials are that B sound.
17:55
Kyle Otte: It's kind of a big sound. You can really see it in your face. So that's one you can really over exaggerate for them. You don't always have to correct them, but really good modeling is going to be kind of what could be very helpful for your kids. Just really good modeling. The next thing I thought I like to do with my kids and I didn't say this earlier, but I do have two kids at home, and so we do lots of reading. Usually at night, right before we go to bed, the kids pick out one or two books, and we like to read their books together. And so there's this website, you can still see it. It's called Epic books, or the website is Get Epic. And I believe if they're a student or you can even create your own login.
18:44
Kyle Otte: And this has tons and tons of books you can access and what you could do with the books. I just wanted to show you the website really quick. But you can type in the word, it's got fall or Thanksgiving, that stuff's coming up. There's tons of different books you can look at on here. And so you pick a book that you think the younger kid would like and then you try to find their sounds. You make it a game, you do. Okay, let's find we're working on L. So my kids at home right now are really into Llama, and it's always Llama Red Pajama every night. And so well, if your kids working on that L sound, that's a perfect book to really get them to practice and to hear that sound. So we also call that auditory bombardment.
19:35
Kyle Otte: So you don't always have to have them practicing saying that sound, but just getting them to hear it and see you make it is going to be really helpful as well. And so finding books that like that and a lot of children's books do a lot of alliteration. So if you have a specific sound, you can probably find a book that has a lot of that where you're saying they have the same sound at the beginning of the words all the time, just from my perspective. So I do a lot of school based therapy and so I don't always have kids that are always all working on either the same sound, or I might have a kid working on answering questions while I have another kid working on L sound.
20:12
Kyle Otte: So I might have the kid who's practicing the L sound saying that word and then the kid so you can do a lot of different things with books, which is why I love books. You get auditory environment, you can get practice with drill and having them practice that sound if they're ready to drill that sound, which is fun. And then the next thing you can do is you could do posting their target sounds around their house. Google is a very good resource for finding pictures of target sounds or labeling items in your house that have your kids target sound and just every time they walk back.
20:52
Kyle Otte: And this might be for an older, maybe not necessarily little like three or four, but if you've got a five, six, even up to probably even to fifth graders every time they walk practice, especially fifth graders, because they can fifth grade, they're probably ten or eleven. And you could probably have them when they walk past the sound and have them practice that sound five times really quick as they walk past it. R is a big sound that a lot of kids have to work on. And that's usually one of the later sounds. And that's usually from my experience, that's the majority of my older kids are working on those R's. And there are a lot of things that you've got roof, refrigerator, lots of different things you can label throughout your house that have that R sound in it.
21:40
Kyle Otte: And when they're walking past, you can have them say it. Another thing you could do is when you're in the car and you see something that has when you're in the car and you think of something or you see something that has their sound in it, you can have them point it out. Or when you're on a long car ride and you want to give them something to do, you can have them. Okay, let's think of some words we might see. Or can you look outside and see something that starts with your sound or that has your sound in it? It could start with it could end with it, or it could be in the middle of it. There are tons of different things.
22:25
Kyle Otte: Even just looking at the books, look at a picture and find a picture of something in this book that has your sound in it. It's really easy to kind of bring there and focus their attention on their sounds. Let's see. And the next one we talked about Rhyming words already, sound manipulation. So this is really good for those like six, seven, eight year olds who are learning to read. We were talking about that Rhyming and some phonological awareness skills you can do practicing sound manipulation. So say cat. Okay, now say cat with, but take out the and change it to bat. So having them think about the sounds and manipulating the sounds, but then you just be smart and pick their target sound.
23:17
Kyle Otte: And now you've got another way to practice articulation and practice their sound, but you also have a way to practice their phonological awareness hills, which is going to help with reading. Another thing that is really helpful for kids thrive on just being noticed. They thrive on you noticing when they're doing something right. I know with my three year old, he has some speech things going on, and so when I catch him saying that sound, because every once in a while he'll get it right and he doesn't notice it, but I do. So I say, hey, you got that right. That was a good snake sound.
23:53
Kyle Otte: Or we speech therapists like to give sounds lots of different names, but you always can kind of just point out when they're making it good, and then when they don't make it good, when they do misarticulate it's not a big deal. Don't make it's not the end of the world. Say, okay, if you're in a practicing moment, let's try that again. What do we need to remember? What do we have to do with our lips? What is Mr. Kyle or what does your speech therapist tell you to do. A lot of times with my sh sound kids, I like to tell them like you're telling someone to be quiet. Remember, either you're telling them to be quiet or make your fish face. So just slight reminders. And little kids don't mind it as much, but we're about to get to big kids.
24:39
Kyle Otte: I know I've worked with middle schoolers and so working on articulation with middle schoolers and older kids can be hard. But another thing is just play. I do a lot of especially virtually even with the younger kids. It's fun to do games and okay, so you're going to say your sound five times. Okay, you said your sound five times. Now you can take your turn. Now it's my turn. Maybe I should practice saying your sound. Tell me if I said it right and making them be therapist and telling you how to do it. And they love that. They love to be in charge and be the boss and be like, well, no, you didn't say that right. And it's fun to pretend to say it wrong and see if they catch it.
25:20
Kyle Otte: Because part of it is using that ear because eventually you want them to be able to correct themselves. That's where that kind of that generalization and that self correction come in. If they can't self correct it, they don't know they made it wrong. So having them being able to identify whether they made that sound right or wrong is a good way to do it too. So instead of focusing on them making the error, make it on you. You make the error and say, hey, did I make that right? You tell me was that right or wrong? And they love to do that. Another so kind of now we're kind of getting into the preteens and the teenagers again, you have the better speech, practice library assignments from your therapist. You can always do that. Repeated or over exaggerated articulation of mispronounced words.
26:11
Kyle Otte: And so just again, modeling is really important. So if you're working at the conversation level I know I get this question a lot is okay, I don't want to correct. My kid gets so frustrated every time.
26:29
Ally Hutchison: Hey, Kyle. Just one moment. Hey guys. I'm sorry. This meeting should be unlimited, but unfortunately it gave us a little bit of a time restriction here. I just changed the account, so it should be unlimited. But unfortunately, I think since we're already logged in, it might have a little text Nafun. If you get kicked out, feel free to just click back on the link to come in. And just so you know, this meeting will be recorded, but what Kyle's about to get into is just those strategies and then we're going to do some FAQ so opportunities to ask questions. So if you do get kicked out, just click on that link again and Kyle will be here. We can keep going. Sorry about that inconvenience everyone.
27:06
Kyle Otte: We'll just keep going, and if we get kicked out, we'll it. We'll just fix it. All right? So like I was saying so if you're working on that conversation.
Part 2
00:01
Kyle Otte: Alright. So one of the biggest questions I get asked is kind of what
00:09
Kyle Otte: adults and parents, and they for their teenagers. They said, I can't. I can't correct my child all day long, and they get mad at me. I get mad at them, they get so frustrated. So what I like to recommend is.
00:22
Kyle Otte: take 5 min, take 5 min where you say, and you and they can pick 5 min. Or you know, we talk to them and say, Okay, what's going to be? What's kinda going to be our limit together as far as
00:33
Kyle Otte: how much can we tolerate before we get super frustrated with each other? I always start with 5 min, and you can, just when you're talking. 5 min is not 5 min, is it is a long time to talk. It's a lot of it's a lot of speech. if you're having a really good conversation. So you you know, you can Google quick conversation topics if you need a topic to talk about.
00:55
Kyle Otte: I think I love especially for teenagers. is talking about movies or relevant movies and taking 5 min and saying, Okay, hey? For this 5 min we are going to practice your speech. We are going to correct when you make it wrong. We're going to correct it. just for this 5 min, and then we're done, and then we're then we can rock because it is tiring, and it's it. It could be frustrating. So, taking 5 min to do it.
01:20
Kyle Otte: my next big recommendation is reading out loud reading out how it is like the closest thing to simulated talking. that you can get to
01:30
Kyle Otte: and what reading out loud allows you to do what it's good practice reading to If you have it ahead of time. What I like to do is you could go through and highlight your sound. If you're kind of a beginner, and you're just starting at that. And they're just starting at that. You know that conversation or that reading level. I go through and find their sounds and highlight the sounds, and then, as they're reading it out loud when you have it highlighted, they can think about. Okay.
01:54
Kyle Otte: I know that sound is
01:58
Kyle Otte: right.
02:03
Kyle Otte: Okay. I know that sound is coming out. So let me
02:09
Kyle Otte: let me kind of think about how I have to make this on it. It just gives their brain a heads up if you've been practicing, and they've been if they're going up that. So we have this ladder. Basically, you start with the sounds you move up from sounds to syllables, to the whole words, then to phrases and the sentences, and then maybe reading and conversation. And so if you're up at that com reading conversation level, you drill this down. So your brain kind of already knows
02:35
Kyle Otte: that one that their brain already knows what they have to do. So it's highlighting that sound. We'll just kind of give their brain a heads up, and then, when they're kind of ready to move past that highlighting portion, you could just, you know, take the highlight away and have them practice reading out loud. It's really good practice to get the sound, and it's not as
02:53
Kyle Otte: It's not as it. It seems to be less combative when it's reading something, and then they can pick something they're interested in. So when you're interested, like for reading
03:02
Kyle Otte: like I
03:04
Kyle Otte: like, I know that, like some of my middle school age, kids are like.
03:08
even though, like Harry Potter, some of them want to read Harry Potter. I have a friend who
03:13
Kyle Otte: I have a client who's really into Star Wars. So he really wanted to. So we found we found some articles on Star Wars online, and we practice reading those articles out out. So those are some just kind of some reading out loud strategies. You can do that. It's very. It's very similar to speaking in that you're still making this week sound is still coming out. It's so flowing more naturally than just repeating sounds or repeating sentences
03:39
Kyle Otte: another tool that I thought was really cool on that. I think Allie actually shared it with me. Is this this chatGpt. And it's an AI tool, artificial intelligence tool. But basically, you can ask it for a list of words. You can ask it for paragraphs. so say I wanted to work on
04:02
Kyle Otte: I wanted to have my student practice art, so I can tell it. You know.
04:09
Kyle Otte: story
04:11
Kyle Otte: with words that start with R
04:17
Kyle Otte: what's the by the time there's a radiant morning in a rustic village like See
04:22
Kyle Otte: and it and it's doing that all by this I didn't have to do anything, and it is going. I
04:27
Kyle Otte: sometimes you have to be a little bit very specific with it. You might have to ask it to make a shorter sentence, or you could. And I'm here like at the highlighting tool that I was asking about. You could actually ask it to highlight, the Rs or highlight, the specific sound, or the word This is relatively new. So it's not a.
04:45
Kyle Otte: It's not a perfect
04:48
Kyle Otte: perfect thing, but it is a really cool tool to use. And if you just want wordless words, words that start with R
04:55
Kyle Otte: in speech world, we go with sounds a lot. So sometimes when I then that's what that dash I put on them. It like the little stuff. I think this is a backwards, backwards slash you. Basically, that means the sound. So when you put that in parentheses, that means that sound
00:05:11
Kyle Otte: So for that, for that AI tool to use so I find it.
00:05:15
Kyle Otte: I'll it gives kind of that idea of what it what sound to me.
05:20
Kyle Otte: or what's kind of where it's you can do
05:25
Kyle Otte: you can do stories. You can do short stories. You could it? It is. It's a pretty cool tool to use and it's just a website. It's so you can, you create a free account and you link it to an email address. And then and it is pretty cool. pretty cool thing to use.
05:42
Kyle Otte: so those are pretty much all the strategies that I kind of came up with on my between. Do they talking some other therapist and vice as well as this kind of things I've used in the past. I, these are some of the just, just some of the references. Mainly, I use the as a website to an American space like that, and hearing Association website,
06:01
Kyle Otte: as well as just some other
06:04
Kyle Otte: books and articles that kind of had the resources. But I do want to open it up. You can either. I mean, open it up for questions.
06:14.
Kyle Otte: and you can either put them in the chat or you can. Just you can just talk. However, you feel comfortable
06:22
Kyle Otte: anyone has any questions.
06:25
Ally Hutchison: So I'm good unless we have someone in the crowd as someone in the crowd want to go ahead. Otherwise I have some that have been emailed to me from some clients.
06:34
Ally Hutchison: I'm gonna start with that just to get us comfortable. so I have a question that says my child graduated from speech, but still has errors. They don't seem to be bothering him, or others don't seem to have a hard time understanding him. When should we consider coming back to speech, if ever.
06:52
Kyle Otte: Yeah. So that's a that's a really tough question. I actually had a client. that I I had. I had a conversation with the parents and the kid about it, because that they kid wasn't bothered by the Kid really wasn't bothered by their speech at all. It was a very minor error, they were able to fix it. it's a hard conversation to have it. It kind of depends on kind of where you want to go, and but at the end of the day, when it's about the kid, I I really like to be child focus. And my recommendation is if they're if they're
07:21
Kyle Otte: and they're not. If they're ready to be done, or they're not ready to make progress. Then they're really not going to make progress, and they don't want to make progress right? that's kind of my thinking. So if they're in that stage of what they don't want to make progress well, they're still going to talk right? So you can. You don't want. They're not shipping them or anything like that. But they're still going to talk to. They they're going to know when they're making the error and by recommending just model. If they're if they're really little, you could still model that correct sound you could. So
07:49
Kyle Otte: there's the world around us that has all the all the sounds that we're gonna be saying. So I think. you know, that's a kind of a conference like between. That's kind of a parenting conversation and the sense conversation and the sense, because you want you want your kids to make projects, but if they're not bothered by it, I lean more towards if they're not bothered by it, and
08:09
Kyle Otte: they're relatively, you know, it doesn't super impact their, you know it. It depends, because if they're hard to understand, you still want to work on it. But if they're not really hard to understand, and they're not super bothered by it.
08:20
Kyle Otte: They they'll eventually wanted to get either they wanted to get it fixed or they're super comfortable with who they are. And that's okay.
08:29
Ally Hutchison: yeah, yeah. I think that's a great response. And I also think that Kyle makes a good point that when your children start to get to an age where you know, you know, fifth grade, fourth grade, where you know their input and their attitude towards speech significantly impacts their output. It's certainly something to keep in mind. So if you have a child that's completely checked out of speech therapy, it's really difficult to sell that that self motivation piece is going to be huge for their ability to use it in conversational
09:00.
Ally Hutchison: speech. however, with that said, I think it's really nice to tap into resources like Better Speech, since we do offer opportunities for you to get a therapist immediately and and and do a 4 to 8 week to 12 week course of speech therapy to dip in and dip out. We also have our program, like the sustain program, where you can be seen one time every 3 months that way. If clients are, you know what we want to get a check and we will send a key.
09:25
Ally Hutchison: We still want to keep this in the forefront of our mind. But my child's really not a great candidate for everyday speech right now, and they're not really responding. That's also a really nice option to offer them. I'll tell you what we do get a lot of better speech clients. that are adults that are working on some of their articulation sounds as well, potentially those that didn't remediate that in those younger school age years like they, there are the th sometimes our adult clients with the list.
09:49
Ally Hutchison: And it's definitely something that our adult clients nor our pediatric clients should ever feel ashamed about the reason that our adult clients come to us at that time is because at that point they're really trying to not be better understood, but home their communication skills to be more professional in nature. So they don't want to be doing the W. For art at a board meeting, or they're really feeling self conscious about that list when they're on a date with someone, or when they're presenting at their work. So it's really interesting to see articulation across the age spectrum, and how it has come and go
10:22
Ally Hutchison: If you find that you have that middle school, or high school student or child of yours that really isn't making that progress like I mentioned reach out to Better Speech because we do have options that aren't that rigorous every week therapy we could do to those monthly check-ins like that.
10:36
Kyle Otte: That's the point. I definitely seen that with my older clients who are working on, I do have I specifically have a specific, an older client that really like. He owns his own business, and he would. He doesn't. He has a hard time with his ours, and so he doesn't want to be, you know, presenting in front of people who are either trying to invest in his business when he can't say as ours. And so you definitely get the whole span of you. They really kids, kids, kids love it. Middle schoolers
11:02
Kyle Otte: don't always love it. I have to enjoy it. And then you get the adults. You want to just improve their communication skills. I want to want to be sound more professional.
11:12
Ally Hutchison: sure. Does anybody from the crowd have a question. If they want to ask in the chat, or out loud, or if not, I can take another one that I have from parents that sent some in.
11:26
Ally Hutchison: I had one parent. Say, Kyle, do you have any apps that you recommend to help children independently work on their sounds?
11:33
Kyle Otte: Yeah, so as far as
11:37
Kyle Otte: there. So I these 2 different apps on my iPad that I use. I have an articulation station, and then
11:49
Kyle Otte: but now I'm trying to remember what the other one was. There's articulations I have both of them. There's articulation station, and that Mary, is another one that I was trying to think of. But I can't remember what was the name of it. Is it potentially speech clubs? Because that's yeah. That's what I was saying. I think it's speech gloves. yeah. And so those are really G,
12:09
Kyle Otte: and that's a relly good. And I think I I want to say
12:13
Kyle Otte: our click. Oh, and then there's articulate.
12:15
Kyle Otte: articulate it And I think both of those, I think they both actually offer the option to record this up which kids tend to like to do they get to record that they can kind of record themselves, hear themselves say it, and then they can practice it again. So those those are some pretty good apps that I like to use. I I've I've never tried. I've I've heard of speech, but I've seen it before. I don't know if I'm actually Friday, but I've I've heard it's pretty good.
12:40
Ally Hutchison: My daughter uses speech blood, so I'm a speech therapist myself, and my daughter has a pretty significant speech, sound difficulties.
12:48
Ally Hutchison: and of course she won't work with her mom, so she does get speech therapy. But she does really enjoy her time on the iPad, and the cool thing about the speech pubs app is, it? Does put the child's face into a like a character. So she's like running around their little activities. And it's really her face. And it has real time videos of children. it's very, very silly. I've never seen her like work
13:12
on her speech as much by herself. So that's always like the fun app as well
13:17
Ally Hutchison: Does anybody else have any questions. I have a I have about 3 more from that were sent in, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes. If they have anything they specificAlly Hutchison would like to ask Kyle or I.
13:29
Ally Hutchison: let's see, I have.
13:33
Ally Hutchison: Okay, they said. My child can do their sound perfect when they're reminded, and then they drop their sound in conversation. How can I help with this?
13:41
Kyle Otte: Yeah. So that's kind of what I was talking a little bit about in the presentation of okay. It they they have it. They know how to make this sound.
13:50
Kyle Otte: so
13:51
Kyle Otte: convert conversation like, that's that like that. It's one of those things. It's really hard to simulate. And it's really hard to like outside of the speech room. It's really hard to get into that. But the best thing like I was saying is either pick a type. But at least this is what I've worked for. People that I've worked with is just setting a time to work on that specifically in conversation. So one like you don't get they don't get frustrated. You don't get frustrated. because even with my 3 year old that I
14:15
Kyle Otte: which I'm trying to get a new sound. She probably doesn't even need to be making quite yet. It gets really frustrating for me because
14:21
Kyle Otte: he doesn't want to do it, but he also gets frustrated because I can't understand what he's saying.
14:27
Kyle Otte: But when you remind it so it's it's really breaking past that like that Mayor. that reading thing reading that reading out loud. But I was talking about is a really good way to practice that, because it's a little bit more spontaneous. You don't always know what sound is coming.
14:42
Kyle Otte: so that way they don't necessarily think the corrections. So starting with like fading, that highlighting, so highlighting the sounds person then fading it. is going to be a good way to practice as well.
14:53
Kyle Otte: And then you could do
14:55
Kyle Otte: you know, you can do Conversation 6. You know, you could take, you know, on top of those 6 right topics that you wanna topics that'd be fun to talk about. And then just for make it a game. So we're going to talk about this topic for 5 min. And you're going to practice your. You know. We're going to listen for our sound. Make sure you're doing it good, and then trying not to, or even you can even fade that verbal prop, too. So you want to go from
15:17
Kyle Otte: so you can do so. Verbal prompt is a pretty intrusive prompt when you're talking but then you can always kind of either kind of create, like a handsome or a little kind of like, like a little not, or something that says, Hey, you didn't get that right? So that way, you're kind of fading. It's where they don't necessarily always rely on it. And then you're kind of fading that prompt away.
15:36
Ally Hutchison: Yeah, I like the idea of reducing that verbal feedback because I find with parents some of the parents I've worked with. It's at like constant tug of war with their child of like, I'm trying to help, and they're not really responding well to it.
16:49
Ally Hutchison: So something I like to advise parents to do as well is having, like a almost like a clear, like one of those big pretzel jars in their house. And if you have any sort of item that you can drop in there. You can do rocks from outside. If you don't really want to buy anything you could do. If you want to get creative, and you're like a fun pinterest parent, you can get those like little puff balls and put them in there and have a line, and anytime you've caught your kid doing it right.
16:14
Ally Hutchison: Add that in there, and they can see a visual representation like if you're having a conversation with your child, and you see that they do. There are sound right? Or if they do, their essay phone right, drop a couple of those balls in there and then, once they reach like that line, reward them with something like, you know, I'm really really super proud of you for how hard you've worked on integrating those phones or sorry using those sounds in your speech
16:35
Ally Hutchison: like, let's go grab an ice cream cone on the way home from school today, or let's go get one of those, you know games that you've really wanted to rent from the library. you know, there's many different creative ways that you can reward your child for doing it versus correcting them for not doing it. And I think that's always like a good way of just using that positive praise versus that constructive feedback.
17:00
Kyle Otte: Absolutely.
17:01
Ally Hutchison: I like that. I never try. I've never tried that, but that is a good way to do it. I've always thought about like just maintaining the verbal problem that I'm not using another type of like, individual cool. Yeah, just being like, I caught you doing it right type of thing. And then, you know, kids get addicted to that, you know, they're like, I got one, or how many can I get if something's connected to it. Ice cream at my house it usually goes pretty well. let's see, I think I have one or 2 more. I think it's kind of already, answered this pile.
17:30
Ally Hutchison: this. I'm gonna kind of put these 2 together. Someone says I'm having a hard time knowing how often I should correct my child with their errors in conversation, and I find they get angry or self-conscious with me, and I do that. And then the other question is, what are some ways I can help my child work on their sounds without so much frustration. so kind of addressing that for.
17:48
Ally Hutchison: And I think that's pretty relevant. If if some parents in here, or even some adults in this seminar it, it is a frustrating thing to not have that naturalness of that sound. So how do we address that? That big emotion of frustration when it comes to speech? Sound disorders?
18:06
Kyle Otte: Yeah, that that's a that's a good question, because there you. You do have that whole emotional aspect of it where?
18:13
Kyle Otte: When you one, I know when I'm frustrated and I'm like.
18:17
Kyle Otte: but I'm even with my kid, like I'm frustrated, but where it'll come out wrong, I know. So like what. So one. So when you're first, it's going to make it worse so
18:25
Kyle Otte: or it can make it worse when you're not. when you're not focused, or your your focus so much on the what you know, the frustration and not the actual, what you what you need to work on? So I think you know one is so, for if you're working on yourself, you know, using using some kind of, you know, common strategy, you know, like we're, I do this. I do this with myself and my kid. all is taking. You know we work on taking a deep breath to calm our me, because that is a part of it.
18:54
Kyle Otte: an emotional piece. And you know part of it. You kind of just have to do a little bit of acceptance there, it very T, where you have to start. You have to kind of start, you know, accepting. Okay, this is something that I have to that either my child's doing, whether I have to do it. And so if you're if you're doing it for yourself.
19:09
Kyle Otte: you know, and I and I talked a lot about this. I do have a few point people that stutter and a big part of that is, you know, being okay with who you are. and you know there's not. There's always going to be room for improvement. There's always something. But there's some stuff that we can always control.
19:28
Kyle Otte: And so I think, kind of getting into that acceptance. And okay.
19:31
Kyle Otte: you know, this is this is what I have. And I have. I'm going to work on this. And it's okay. because none of us, none of us are perfect at all. and so they're every. We all have different things that we have going on just like, just like if you have
19:48
Kyle Otte: just like I have asthma just like I I've I've got to take my as a brad. You gotta do speech therapy to help work on your speech. I take some litigation to work on what? So I can breathe. You know it's a little bit. It's a little hard to compare, but like there it is the same. It's a similar concept,
20:03
Kyle Otte: And then, if you're trying to help, you know, helping your kid when helping your kid accept
20:08
Kyle Otte: that. Okay, yeah, they have this thing going on, but it doesn't make it many, but they're just. They're so the cool kid that they are right, and you know, for and for affirming you're getting who they are, and letting them know that no matter whether they say they're sound right or wrong, you know there's there's still a because that's going to make, you know. And they still feel love is going to be kind of that more, that really important piece
20:30
Kyle Otte: because you gotta get through like, yeah. And it's it's going to be important to be able to communicate. But in the in the long term, the things, if you you know your ass is a little bit off your ass. Is that perfect? Chris asked. It is at the end of the day. It's not
20:44
Kyle Otte: it, you know it's not. It's not the end. I'll be all right. but for little kids you just, you know, I'm letting them know that they feel love. And then it's okay. and not talking negatively about it around like either their other family members and saying, Get this, hey, we're doing this. And this is, you know, he gets to go hang out with Mr. Kyle and play video play games, and we get to do speech. And it's fun I can't like in the schools. I can't tell you how many times I go into the home. True, father is. I want to go, Mr. Ronnie. Can I go? Can I get it? They love going to speech.
21:13
Ally Hutchison: but keeping that positive attitude about it is going to be really helpful. I hope I answer that question. Yeah, I think the thing that I really like about the way that you answer that is, one is just identifying that nothing good is going to come out of a state of frustration. And I think it's really important for adults to remember that like you said when you're frustrated, you're not thinking clearly, you're thinking in that lizard brain. You know, you're just fight or flight. And it's really important that it's okay, just for
21:41
Ally Hutchison: your parents to have the permission to to stop And it's it's important to have that permission to stop and then to take that stress off of doing the drill activities. And really, like you exemplified many wonderful times in your presentation, Kyle,
21:56
Ally Hutchison: selecting activities that just have your child's target word in there and by doing those other things like we talked about by like They're subtly rewarding them for practicing at the right way, even giving them a reward for even attempting at times. If there's there isn't any hard and fast rule, for when you're taking these articulation strategies into your home, anything that you're doing is great practice. And.
22:18
Ally Hutchison: like Kyle mentioned, really just ensuring that the frustration level is low is the most important part.
22:23
Ally Hutchison: So whether it means getting a book from the library that has your child's target word or playing a game of I spy in the car of finding things that start with us. you know, just integrating fund ways, and then even just allowing your child to produce it incorrectly, but just having a space space to produce it at all, because of the child healing self conscious and angry. There really isn't going to be much attempt in that in that area. So I think that was an awesome, awesome
22:48
Ally Hutchison: answer
22:49
Ally Hutchison: that that that summarizes the questions that I got on sent in virtuAlly Hutchison so. We have about 2 min left of our presentation time. If anybody has any additional questions, please feel free to chat them, or you can ask them now. Otherwise, thank you so much for coming. And that concludes our presentation.
About the Presenter
Kyle Otte
I am an ASHA board-certified SLP who has been practicing for 5 years. I have experience both in schools and privately, treating a variety of Speech or Language Disorders. I am very passionate about speech sound development and helping people communicate effectively.
