By Pam Marshalla
Q: My toddler-age clients sometimes fuss and cry, even scream. I know this is normal behavior for a little kid, but I am a young therapist with no children of my own yet, and I simply do not know how to handle it. Do you have advice for me? Sometimes it is the language we use that causes stubborn and uncooperative behavior. Changing our language can improve some of these situations. Let me illustrate with a story. 🙂 I was…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I have an elementary age male client that was attaining an adequate R, but then we had scheduling problems and he lost it. I cannot get it anywhere now. Help! When I have a client like this, I start from scratch. I assume they can do nothing that I worked on with them, and I re-visit all we have done before. Slow way down. Do not assume any generalization. Review, review, review what he could already do and solidify…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Recently I came across an SLP who was using oral-motor tools but not following sanitary procedures. Ahhhhhh! What resources can I share with her? SLPs must follow sanitary procedures at all times when touching a client in, on, or around the mouth with the hands or other objects. The following notes are from my upcoming book, The Marshalla Guide. Sanitizing the Hands Wash the hands with a sanitizing soap. Dry the hands with a paper towel and dispose of…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am serving a student with moderate acquired dysarthria impacting speech intelligibility due to impaired respiration, phonation, coordination, speech rate and articulatory precision. She is six-years old and her accident was 2 years ago. She can follow directions well and is aware that she sounds different than her peers. The most obvious speech quality is the slow rate, pausing, and unnatural phrasing. Her peers tend to ignore her when she is speaking because these qualities make her sound so…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Can you help me deal with a situation? I work in the schools. A private SLP accused me in a meeting with parents recently of not using the correct “motor planning methods” with a mutual apraxic child. Do you know what she is talking about? She really embarrassed me. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I regret the competitiveness that some therapists have, and absolutely detest the way some private therapists treat SLPs in the schools. You should not have had to experience that….
By Pam Marshalla
Q: Do you think that clients really can improve when parents never attend therapy as is common in the public schools? The notion that children only can improve when parents are involved is a modern idea that runs counter to the way therapy has been practiced throughout the past century. In 38 years I rarely have involved parents all the time. I have parents watch parts of therapy when they are around, and I give them encouraging information about how…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I am working with toddlers for the first time after a 10-year career with elementary school children. They are different! Can you guide me? This is what I would tell a graduate student–– With a toddler, the most important thing to change from therapy with older children is that you have to STOP trying to get him to do what you want him to, and you have to START doing what he is doing. In other words, stop saying,…
By Pam Marshalla
Q: I notice that kids who come to me for frontal lisp often have the tongue-tip protruding on T, D, N, and L as well. Should I address these errors too? I always fix tongue-tip problems on T, D, N, and L before I work on S and Z. From a motor develop perspective, correct tongue movement on S and Z is an outgrowth of tongue movement on T, D, N, and L. There is no reason why you can’t work…
By Pam Marshalla
I was recently reminded of a client I worked with decades ago who taught me a very important lesson about therapy when I was a young therapist. I wanted to share his story. David David was 6;0 and non-verbal. He was a big clunky kid with fine and gross motor problems who was basically untestable, and everyone thought he had very low IQ. I was using Bliss Symbols with him (it was 1976) to develop a home-made communication board (before…
By Pam Marshalla
Sooooooooo many questions about teaching S come in that I want to take this opportunity to write out the simplest most direct method that therapists have been using since early in the 20th century. This method is reported in just about every articulation therapy textbook ever written. The oldest reference I have seen for it is Scripture (1912). Scripture’s book is one that Van Riper recommended. There are dozens of ways to do this, but this is the basic procedure––…
