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Information
Our Contributor
The author, Magan Chen-Leo is team leader of the product development team of KeepLearning! Puzzle - Why?
Magan trained in London, U.K. (M. Sc.) and Sydney, Australia (B. App. Sc.). She has more than 16 years of teaching experience.
Magan is a registered Speech Language Pathologist / Therapist with the Speech Language and Hearing Association Singapore (SHAS) and the Speech Pathology Australia.
Together with a few speech therapists, she helped found the Speech Language and Hearing Association Singapore (SHAS) (thanks for the privilege, Helen, Praema, Poh Sim and company!) and served as its first President.
Magan is currently practising at Leo Magan Speech Sanctuary in Singapore and can be reached at (65) 6223-7876.
The following article (part I) is published in the "Small World 2005/2006" magazine and is available in leading news stands in the Republic of Singapore.
Talk About Children's Speech - Part I
Speech and language therapists (SLT) diagnose and treat children who may have communication delays or other difficulties. Here are some common questions which parents typically ask a SLT.
Q: I have noticed my child stammering on some occasions. I don't want to make him even more self-conscious. Should I just ignore it?
A: It is not surprising that children between three to five may not be very fluent in their speech on occasions. They are still learning to pronounce words, to use long words, to string all these word into sentences - possibly while being excited, distracted or upset!
While many children (perhaps as much as forty percent) outgrow such periods of 'non-fluency', there are also children who do stutter. (The incidence is about 1 percent, it is 4 times more likely to occur with boys than girls, and family history may play a part.)
While it is understandable that parents would not want to place additional pressure on the child, it is also not advisable to just ignore the problem and hope that it will go away. If stuttering continues into adulthood, it would affect schooling, work, and social life, and is much harder to treat.
How you respond to a stuttering child is probably more important than what you say or do. Remember that stuttering is a real speech problem: your child is not being careless or lazy or even nervous.
Being a good listener helps; being anxious or judgemental doesn't.
Give your child your time and attention, and respond to what your child is saying, not just how it is being said. A speech and language therapist who works with children who stutter will be able to advise parents on helping their child speak more fluently - often with the child enjoying the therapy as speech games!
Q: My child is talking, but his speech is not clear. Is it because he has a short tongue?
A: Contrary to popular belief, unclear speech is rarely due to the tongue being physically too short. In some cases, it is due to a short tongue frenum. This is the strip of muscle you see joining the tongue to the bottom of the mouth when you raise the tip of your tongue (e.g. when you say the 'l' sound in 'lion'). When the frenum is very short, a tongue-tie occurs and restricts the tongue movements, which affects how sounds are produced. Surgical correction may be required.
Here are some other common causes for speech not being clear:
1. The child may have had periods of hearing problems. Ear infections, fluid in the ear due to a bad cold or even just accumulated (impacted) earwax, can all interfere with hearing, and hearing is crucial in the early stages of learning to produce sounds.
2. The child may not have good awareness, control and co-ordination of parts of the mouth necessary for speech. (It's a bit like learning to dance- there may be nothing physically wrong with your legs, but you feel as if you are moving with two left feet.)
It is also important to remember that speech sounds develop step by step. Different sounds are produced by different positions of the tongue, lip etc and how they move. Not all sounds are learnt immediately.
There is a general pattern:
- By the time a child is three, s/he should be able to produce a fair number of sounds in English.
- Some sounds that are still not produced correctly by this age are entirely acceptable developmentally, while some errors are so conspicuous that it makes speech almost impossible for outsiders to understand. Most doctors, teachers etc would recommend that parents seek help from a speech and language therapist if your child is three or older and is still difficult for adults to understand.
- Sounds requiring more precise tongue positioning (such as 's, z, sh, ch, l, j, f') should be expected by about four or five years, such that a five-year-old should be speaking clearly enough to be understood by anyone.
- Some sounds that take the most time to learn include 'v, th, r', as well as blending different sounds together (e.g. saying both 'g' and 'l' sounds in 'glue' or 's', 'k' and 'w' in 'square').
While your child is learning to talk, it helps to talk clearly to them in simple sentences. Offering opportunities for different food textures in diet as well as toys for teething and exploring also play a part because biting, chewing, sucking etc all play a part in helping children learn awareness and control of mouth movements.
If your child is still having difficulty with speech sounds despite your repeated efforts to teach her or correct her, you may want to seek help from a speech and language therapist. Just like many other problems, it takes less effort to nip a problem in the bud, rather than waiting and hoping for the problem to go away.
Waiting means that the child is not learning the correct sounds and is in fact getting more practice saying something incorrectly. It is also frustrating for both the parents and the child.
Parents themselves should not attach a stigma to speech and language therapy - often children enjoy the activities in therapy sessions and the individual attention!
Next: Talk About Children's Speech - Part II
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