By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client can do S and Sh correctly, but I cannot get him to do Ch. Ideas? Van Riper used a term that applies here. He said the “association method” was the process of using a phoneme the client already can produce to teach him to say a phoneme he cannot produce. In this case, the easiest way to do this is to use Sh to teach Ch. Think about how we transcribe Ch. It is /t∫/. This means…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Should a lateral lisp be treated for a three-year-old when it is present in the speech of a parent? Maybe it will not be outgrown? I always treat lateral lisp as early as possible because I do not believe that it is ever outgrown. The lateral lisp is a deviant sound, not a delayed sound. Therefore more time will not necessarily make it go away. If anything, the lateral lisp seems to get more habituated as the child gets…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a client with a lateral lisp, and I have started trying to elicit an S with the tongue tip down. I call a tip-down S a “dipper” and a tip-up S a “tipper.” The dipper position has helped him, but I can’t find any information about the validity of using such an approach. Can you point me in the right direction? I love your terms “tipper” and “dipper.” Excellent shorthand! The tipper and the dipper are allophonic…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Do you think that enlarged tonsils and adenoids are related to the lateral lisp? We have no data on this as far as I know. I have seen a few kids where I thought these problems were inter-related. But I would not suspect that all tonsil/adenoid problems cause lateral lisps, or that all lateral lisps are caused by tonsil/adenoid problems. I think you have to determine this for the individual child. We must ask ourselves: Do the tonsil/adenoid problems…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client says Sf for initial S words, as in “Sfoap” for “soap.” One simply has to hold the lower lip down and out of the way while practicing the words. This will prevent the lower lip from elevating to produce the F. I probably would have the client use his own fingers to hold the lip down. I call a method like this an “inhibition” technique. You are inhibiting an unwanted movement. At the very least the child’s…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am aware that a lateral lisp is not considered a developmental error and that it probably will not be outgrown. But I have had parents decline therapy for their six-year-olds saying that they don’t hear it, or telling me that the child does it only when his is excited. Do you have any advice for educating parents about this type of speech error and helping convey the importance of therapy? Most SLPs are not trained in counseling parents…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client has been in therapy for a long time for many error phonemes, and now we are working on the sibilants. He is doing them well now, but he tends to pull his right cheek to the side. It sounds correct but looks funny. Does the facial position matter if it sounds okay? If it sounds correct, I would not worry about that cheek pulling to the side until he is well on his way toward establishing the…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: How young do you see children with a lateral lisps? Most SLPs leave the lateral lisp alone until age 6-8. However, I and many other therapists address it earlier with children 4 and 5 years of age. I work on the following with younger kids– I make sure that T and D are midline and not lateral. If they are lateral, I straighten them out. I use a straw for this– They produce T into the straw held outside…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Many SLPs write to me with questions about sibilants that are distorted––inter-dental, frontal, whistled, palatal, lateral, and so forth. I have given lots of advice about these errors, but sometimes I can’t. Why? Sometimes I can give no advice for fixing errors on the sibilants because the errors are distorted in such refined ways that there is no way to determine what exactly is going on without seeing and hearing the error myself. If you have taken classes of…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have a 21-year-old client with above average intelligence who says “shtreet” for “street.” He also says “undershtanding” for “understanding” and “shtretch” for “stretch.” He seems to do this on purpose. Any comments? It has been my observation that a certain segment of the population––especially those under 25 years of age––uses an “Sh” for “S” substitution in “Str” clusters. The result is “shtreet” and the other examples you have given above. Even Mrs. Obama does this. In the 1970’s, this…
