It’s What We Hear That Helps Our Speech Change Quickly!

I’m about to share a secret with you all. It’s about speech – sound training, and it’s very important. When working with children who are a little older, around the ages of 6 to 12, I find that “ear training” can evidence more success in changing speech behaviors than addressing just individual sounds.

As we age, speech patterns and speech errors become more difficult to correct. In speech therapy, I start with making sure the child can produce the sound. Then, I drill it! You see, I was trained 20 years ago by experts in the field of speech therapy who always told us that in order to change behavior, you had to change motor planning, and that meant drilling speech sounds. But to make the sound “stick in the child’s head”, the child needed to recognize when it was being produced incorrectly. That’s why I use techniques like minimal pairs in my speech therapy activities. Also, I will repeat or record/playback the child’s speech productions using my secret weapon found on my iPhone. It’s not uncommon to find me working across various 2 and 3 syllable word combinations, while recording the child’s productions so that we can improve awareness to the overall speech intelligibility in phrases, sentences and conversation. It’s not uncommon for a child to look at me with a big smile and say, “I didn’t say that”!

At the Therapy Group of Tucson, people are talking! We strive to make speech therapy fun, effective and rewarding. If you have a question about speech therapy services in Tucson, or would like to schedule an appointment, please contact me here.