By Pam Marshalla
Q: My son is 2-years and 5-months. His therapist seems frustrated by his stubborn personality and his continual effort to get out of doing his speech cards. I know we can help him more if he would only try. Can you suggest anything? It sounds like the therapist is trying to work with him as though he were four or five years of age. He’s only two and a half! Children this young should balk at doing speech cards. …
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 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: I have worked with a 4-year-old for two years who had a frenectomy about 3 months ago. His speech is quite intelligible now, but he still has heart-shaped tongue, he cannot dissociate his tongue movements from his jaw movements, and he cannot sweep his tongue around lips to clean himself. He stabilizes his tongue with his teeth and can barely extend it beyond lower lip even after surgery. Since speech is good would you still see him for therapy?…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I wanted to order some resources for the B-3 population and was wondering which of your products you recommend. The following materials of mine are useful for B-3 population. Please read about them in our online catalog. Becoming Verbal with Childhood Apraxia The Seven Stages of Phoneme Development Improving Intelligibility with Childhood Apraxia How to Stop Drooling How to Stop Thumbsucking Vowel Tracks Do You Like Pie?
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Can you give our family advice about stimulating speech, language, and feeding in a 14-month old girl with Pierre-Robin Syndrome? She is making some sounds and is pretty smart. We have read your book Becoming Verbal with Childhood Apraxia and it has helped us understand about stimulating sound and word productions. Although she continues to be fed through a G-tube, she now is eating many different foods orally. Let me just make some straightforward statements about how I would…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Can you correct a frontal lisp in a toddler? We can help a child with a frontal lisp beginning at two years of age, however, most SLP’s hold off until these kids are 7, 8, or 9 years of age because of developmental norms. In a private practice, one can see these clients at any age, however one usually counsels the parents that the child does not really need therapy until later because the error is considered “normal” until…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My daughter is almost 4 and her speech is rarely understood by anyone outside of our family. While my daughter absolutely loves her therapist and has made some progress, she has been stuck at a plateau for a while. My daughter is very bright and has a high level of understanding and of vocabulary. However, she never says her word endings, many letters are omitted, she talks in a very rapid rate, S is always slurred, and she can’t…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: How do you teach young children to keep their mouths closed? I am working with a 28-month-old with an open mouth resting posture. He also sucks his thumb and uses a sippy cup. This question is a huge one that requires a lot of background. I will be writing a full chapter on this in my next book, called 21st Century Articulation Therapy to be published in 2012. Let me write a few main ideas here: Medical We always have…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am a worried mom that is looking for some help. My son is 23 months. He’s been in speech therapy for about 2-1/2 months. We go twice a month for 30 minutes. He says no words and his sounds are limited. I suspect an oral motor disorder from the start, but the SLP is still just considering that as the problem. He has no difficulty eating, drinking or nursing. But he drools quite a bit, cannot use a…
