Tips And Activities To Work On Your Child's Speech

Written by Anne Chapman MA CCC-SLP

May is Better Hearing & Speech Month (BHSM)! Your Speech Language Pathologists at Pediatric Interactions are excited to share BHSM with you all to raise awareness about people with communication disorders and the professionals that work with them. To celebrate BHSM, we will be explaining what it means to have a speech delay/disorder and sharing some of our favorite SPEECH strategies and activities you can use to work with your kiddos at home!

First things first...speech is different from language! Language is our communication system—the way that we put meaning to and share the world around us. Speech is HOW we verbally express that system using a specific combination of sounds that represent our language system.

Speech is just one way that we can express language--we also write, which is a whole different visual system to represent our language system! And some people use sign language, pictures, gestures, or speech generating devices when they are unable to use verbal speech to communicate.

So what happens when your child has a speech sound delay or disorder? Your child may have been diagnosed with an articulation disorder, phonological disorder, dysarthria or childhood apraxia of speech. They may have structural differences in their mouths such as a repaired cleft-palate, macroglossia (large tongue) or a tongue tie. All of these diagnoses may indicate that the sounds coming out of their mouths do not sound like what we would expect for your child at their age.

That's where your Speech-Language Pathologist comes in! We work to help your child be able to hear the differences in speech sounds (called phonemes for all you vocab nerds), gain better oral awareness, and learn/relearn how to produce those speech sounds.

So now that we know what speech is, let's get into some tips and activities to work on speech outside of the clinic or school!

1. For your really little ones, hold an item or toy up to your face/mouth so that they can see how you are producing the words you are saying.

2. Similarly, for your older kiddos working on speech, make sure that they are looking at you if you are giving them a model for a speech sound.

3. Do a speech sound scavenger hunt! See if you can find 10 things that start/end with your child's speech sound.

4. Come up with a handful of words to target your child's speech goals during play. For example, if your kid is working on closing their lips for the /m/ sound, think of words and phrases that have /m/ while playing in the kitchen (real or pretend): mmmm, yummy, yum, mlehh (gross sound), milk, hummus, ham, jam, M&Ms, muffin, melon, more _____, make me _______, mom/mommy wants_______, mix, mash, mush, money (to pay for your food).

5. Read a book to your child and see if your she can hear when you say a word with her speech sound.

6. Have them read a book and remind them to “really think about their _____ sound”

7. Some kiddos are okay with your correcting them throughout the day, but this can frustrate many of our children. If you notice your child resisting or becoming overly upset when you correct them or have them say their sounds in a different way, take a step back and only target speech during specific times (e.g., during 1 book in story time, 10 minutes of a worksheet, during lunch conversations)

8. Find their speech sounds within their favorite things. What does your kid like? Disney? Superheroes? My Little Pony? Pokemon? There are soo many names and words associated with their favorite shows, movies, and activities to target their speech sounds. I have a few kiddos who love Pokemon, so we practice our /s/ sounds with our favorite characters (Snorlax, Sandslash, Starmie, Squirtle, Sandshrew, Seal, Snivy, Snorunt)! If your child likes Pokemon specifically, the names and special moves are a GOLD MINE of speech sounds! Download Pokemon Go and label the characters you catch and in your Pokedex!

9. Talk to your speech-language pathologist for ways they show your child how to produce their sound. Maybe they are using a specific verbal cue like, “make your snake sound,” or maybe they always do a certain thing with their hand when making the sound (e.g., putting their hand in front of their mouth like they are checking their breath when making the /h/ sound). If we are all using the same strategies and words, our kiddos will have faster success!