By Pam Marshalla
Q: How can I find out about orofacial myofuctional therapy? Go to the website for the International Association of Orofacial Myology. According to their website, “The IAOM provides information about Orofacial Myological disorders including: tongue thrust, improper mouth posture and incorrect swallowing patterns.”
By Pam Marshalla
Q: How do you get a client to stop puckering, pursing, retracting, and tensing the lips when learning R? To get rid of lip interference when working on R (or any other sound) you need a way to hold the lips back. The child can use his fingers or a Lip Retractor. Fingers: Have the client use his own fingers to pull back the lips.Have the client place one or two fingers inside his mouth at the corners of the…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have heard you say that if kids have problems with sibilants and are missing their front teeth you prefer not to see them until their teeth come in. Could you explain your rationale? Without front teeth true stridency cannot be produced. Stridency is produced as the midline air stream hits the front teeth and then escapes between them. Without front teeth, a client would have to be taught a compensatory movement. He would have to produce his sibilants…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My son is 9 years old and has been diagnosed with autism and apraxia. He is non verbal and low-to-medium functioning. We are trying to determine the best methodology to help him talk more. I read a lot about your Apraxia experience but nothing about your experience with Autism. Since my son has Autism as well I was hoping if you could give me your expert opinion on what to do as I am trying to determine what is…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My son is 2 1/2 years old and has a great level of oral motor difficulty and has been diagnosed with autism. He has only one word that he can produce on command, and that is “mom.” He tries very hard to talk and things come out a jumble. We are working on letter sounds with him as he really enjoys letters. He can make the sounds for the letters S, M, H, A, U, E. It sometimes takes…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Do you recommend therapy breaks for preschoolers with phonological delay? For example, summer off after the year of early childhood in a public school? I have usually found that a break from therapy (especially in the summer) is a fruitful experience for kids. Most often they come back to therapy having made considerable progress on their own. It always seemed to me that all that sunshine, gross motor activity, and new experiences helped them move along. Plus, they are…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Jessica is 26 months old and has a diagnosis of autism/PDD. She has started to respond to discrete trial instruction, however she presents with constant mouthing, licking, and biting her fingers. We have tried numerous things – chewing tubes, cold stimulation, vibration to the mouth, pressure, sweet, sour, salty, ignoring, and so forth. But the behaviors are increasing. Parents report constant licking and gnawing at furniture, books, and other household objects. Any suggestions you can give that might help…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have an older client who can pass an articulation test but who is very hard to understand in connected speech. I heard you talk about “elocution” in one of your classes. Can you refer me to any written material on how to do this? A client who can pass an articulation test but who has problems with intelligibility usually is mildly dysarthric. Thus, they have mild problems with prosody (rate, rhythm, stress, intonation, pitch, tone, volume), vowel clarity,…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have been working with a 10-year-old girl with a significant lateral lisp that affects all of her sibilant sounds. I have been focusing on establishing /s/ and /z/, but have not been able to progress very far because her ability to achieve the correct tongue position is so inconsistent. I have taught her the “Butterfly Position” to help her lift the side margins of her tongue, and am using the “Long T Method” from Frontal Lisp, Lateral Lisp….
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a student I’ve worked with for a few years and she has several problems. I have tried everything I know, and nothing seems to help. She cannot say R, J, Sh, or Ch. She has difficulty with exhalation (i.e. she cannot blow out a candle) and therefore her speech is very quiet. She cannot even yell very loud. I’ve done some oral motor therapy (horn blowing hierarchy) and other things to address this, but it has not…
