By Pam Marshalla
Q: When my 4-year-old client says a word that begins with a vowel, he adds /h/ before it –– “Ate” sounds like “Hate.” What are your thoughts? Let me answer this according to four different scenarios –– 1. Client generally uses no frication at all: If the client was not yet using any fricatives or affricates, and the extra appearances of H were just a fluke, then I would stimulate all eleven sounds for a while till the whole set…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am an SLP and my 12-month-old daughter is developing a lateral lisp on her first words! Help!!! I believe this to be one of the worst positions in which an SLP can find him- or herself. We can teach midline sibilants to very young children, even toddlers, if we approach the acquisition of frication/stridency the way an infant does. I would do these three things now –– 1. Teach her to make a lingua-labial raspberry. Put the tongue…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: In my therapy with kids who have the stopping process, I typically start with S-clusters and S in the postvocalic position. It seems they develop the idea of “fricative-ness” more easily this way and, from there, they more easily go on to prevocalic S. I find that starting with prevocalic S often leads to a lot of frustration because they learn “sock” as “stock,” and so forth. Can you comment on this? First, we have such a mess in…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client is beginning to use S-blends, but she does so with an interdental lisp. Do I treat the phonological process first and let her lisp, or treat the lisp first and then the process? Or should I do both concurrently? I am worried about reinforcing the lisp. I would work on the phonology first to stimulate the use of the phoneme within the language. Then I would address place of articulation. That’s the way I would organize it…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client can say “Er” in words like “flower” when we split the syllables apart: “Flow—er.” But he cannot say it in words like “Bird” or “Shirt.” What can we do? You will notice that you have split “flower” in to syllables like this: “Flow—-Er.” This means that although your client can say “Er,” he cannot sequence from the C to “Er.” We don’t say, “Flow—er.” We say, “Flah—wer.” The /r/ occurs in a CVC, and this requires better…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My client can produce R in all kinds of words, but he still sounds funny on words like “Player” and “Hour.” Can you help with this? I have not heard your client, of course, but the word examples you gave make me think that he may be having trouble with R after diphthongs. Phoneticians tell us that the presence of a diphthong actually causes a glide to be inserted, and your client may not be doing that. This is…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: My daughter is 31 months old. She speaks in single words and uses single syllables. She leaves off the endings off words. I have been teaching final sounds to her, and now she says them, but she separates them from the rest of the word. For example, she says “uh—puh” for “up.” What should I do now? Ooo- No worries. You are on the right track! If she is saying final consonants as a second syllable, THIS IS GOOD. She…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I struggle with kids who are able to get initial but who cannot do final R. Is there some magic I can do here? There is no magic; but I know three solid ways to go about this. We can: (1) Use the syllable, (2) Pair words together, and (3) Abstract R out of a correct word. I find the first method to be the easiest, and I shall explain it here. Get the Syllable If your child can…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: How can I get a two-year-old to produce bi-labials? He substitutes /d/ for all of them. It is my observation that the bilabials emerge because the jaw goes up-and-down, not because the lips do anything. A baby begins to babble with bilabials by banging his jaw up-and-down while he is cooing (prolonging his voice). So when I am trying to get the bilabials, I get the child to produce voice, to prolong it, and then I stimulate the jaw to…
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,…
