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Speech Therapy
What is a speech sound disorder?
A speech sound disorder (SSD) is a communication disorder in which individuals have persistent difficulty saying words or sounds correctly. Most children make some mistakes as they learn to say new words, but a child who does not say sounds by their expected ages may have a speech sound disorder.
Some examples of speech sound disorders:
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Articulation errors- difficulty with the pronunciation of various speech sounds. Children may produce substitutions or distortions of certain speech sounds such as "wabbit" for "rabbit".
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Lisps- protruding tongue in between teeth while producing /s/ and laterally for /s/ /ch/ or /sh/ are commonly associated with orofacial myofunctional disorders (OMDs) such as tongue thrust and correct tongue placement
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Motor speech disorder such as Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)
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Phonological delays/disorders- these present as patterns of speech errors, such as "tootie for cookie" and are often times correlated to phonological awareness skills.
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Mumbling/ Unclear Speech
Who could benefit from Speech Therapy?
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Most children can say almost all sounds correctly by the age of 5. If a 3-year-old isn't able to be understood by strangers about 75% of the time (90-100% for 4-year-olds) then a speech assessment should be recommended.
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A lateral lisp is not considered developmental and should be assessed as early as possible.
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A child struggling with /r/ and/or a child protruding his/her tongue on /s/ and /z/ or other sounds could have an underlying OMD.
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If your child has received traditional speech therapy for a long period of time without seeing signs of improvement often a holistic approach to diagnosing/ treating speech sound disorders is necessary for finding the underlying root cause.
The Impacts of Speech Sound Disorders on Children
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8-year-olds with persistent speech sound disorders were more likely to underperform in English, science, and math attainment tests when they were 10–11 years old and again at 13–14 years old. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12599
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Social, emotional, and academic impact of residual speech errors in school-age children: A survey study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5708870/
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Social impact assessments are an important portion of a speech sound evaluation https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2018_PERS-SIG1-2018-0016