By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a 3-year-old whose front teeth had to be pulled due to decay. He likely won’t have those teeth again for 2-4 years. Do I wait to treat S? This depends upon what you are trying to accomplish… First, if you are trying to bring stridency into the client’s phonological system, and are stimulating S to do that, I would do it now. In fact, I would stimulate for all the strident phonemes right away –– S, Z,…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I just heard the term “velar raspberry.” I feel silly, but I don’t know what it is or why I should be concerned about it. Raspberries are grossly-fricated sounds that babies begin to produce between 4-6 months of age. You know the sound one makes when one sticks the tongue between the lips and blows? That is a raspberry. It is a sound children use to express derision– mockery, scorn, distain, ridicule, and contempt. Raspberries emerge before babbling does,…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I was appalled by your comments that speech-language pathologists should not teach reading! Reading is a part of language! Why not teach reading? In my opinion, reading teachers teach reading, and speech-language pathologists teach speech and language. This is my opinion and I am sticking to it. You may have a different opinion if you would like. Your opinion will not appall me, and I would suggest that mine not appall you. Sounds like a big waste of energy…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Is there an age when surgically altering the lingua frenulum is too late? It is never too late to surgically alter a lingua frenum for improved speech function, except perhaps in the case of degenerative disease. The surgery simply frees the tip of the tongue. It allows the tongue a greater range of movement no matter the age. However, just because the tip is clipped does not mean there is an instant fix to speech. Some clients get very sloppy…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: In your class on apraxia, I listened while you described the difference between an “oral-motor technique” (OMT) and a “non-speech oral-motor exercise” (NS-OME). I understood what you were saying at the time, but when I got home and looked at my notes, I found that I didn’t quite get it. Can you give an example to explain this to me? The OMT and the NS-OME are two completely different concepts. The difference between them has to do with the…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My inattentive three-year-old client suddenly has begun talking on both exhalation and inhalation. Do you have any suggestions to promote proper breathing for speech? The airflow toys can help teach young children all about the direction of airflow. These include horns, whistles, kazoos, harmonicas, sirens, and spirometers. A toy that works upon exhalation only (horn, whistle) can teach a child about moving air outward. Teach him “Blow out.” (These toys will not sound when inhaled.) A toy that works…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a client, 2.5 years, who substitutes “F” for “K,” “B,” “D,” “G,” and “T” in initial “R” and “L” clusters. “W” replaces the glides. I am not concerned about the glides. Is the child just over-learning the “F” sound? The replacement of a single phoneme for a cluster is called “Coalescence.” Hodson and Paden define this as the “replacement of two adjacent phonemes by a single new one which retains features from both of the original phones”…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Do you have any thoughts on thumb sucking as a way to move facial bones? One of my four-year-old clients is a frequent thumb sucker. A professional on my team wants to encourage the habit to move this child’s facial bones as part of her craniosacral therapy. The therapist says that the child’s thumbsucking is “a pathological compensation for a structural anomaly.” Now the staff thinks that this child’s thumb sucking is okay. What do you have to say about…
