Voice Lessons for speech delay?

[jenn-]

I have 3 boys with articulation issues. All 3 of them can make the proper sounds (except R) when prompted, but choose to revert to their "lazy" speech when talking to each other and usually us. :glare: I was thinking of trying out something like singing lessons for at least one of them who likes to sing in the car in hopes that it would encourage him to try to speak clearer. Do you think a serious voice coach would even consider a student that won't use full word sounds? Speech therapy really doesn't work out (trust me) because they switch on their sounds the moment they walk in the door and switch off the moment they walk out.

[funnygirl]

That's an interesting thought. I'm wondering, though, if they would turn it on and off for a voice coach as well.

 

I have a "lazy" speaker; hearing-impaired and refuses to wear hearing aids. I have been told over and over that until SHE wants to fix it, nothing is going to make that lazy speech go away. In fact they dismissed her from speech therapy in ps for that very reason.

 

Sigh.

[KAR120C]

I have 3 boys with articulation issues. All 3 of them can make the proper sounds (except R) when prompted, but choose to revert to their "lazy" speech when talking to each other and usually us. :glare:

DS had speech therapy when he was younger, and "graduated"... because he could make all the sounds. Whether he did or not was very situation-dependent. :glare:

 

What really helped at that point was voice lessons, although it was probably assisted by the fact that his voice (and flute) teacher was also a music therapist. He can still be sloppy with his articulation, but the improvement was significant and was better-generalized to his daily speech.

 

We've recently moved away and don't have that teacher available anymore... So as a followup, I think we're going to try a regular voice teacher and maybe drama classes where he could get some elocution reinforcement.

 

So I would definitely give it a try. If you have a music therapist available, that might be even better, but I think just regular voice lessons could help a ton, too!

[merry gardens]

By voice lessons, do you mean singing? Singing is largely based on vowel sounds. Ending consonant sounds are often "stuck on" the begining of the next word when singing, for example, "it is" becomes "/i/ tis". That sounds good in singing, but it sounds strange when spoken. Music training does involve auditory processing and auditory training, so music training might help with speech.

 

Has your children's phonemic awareness ever been evaluated? I have two children who could make the age appropriate sounds but who nevertheless were very difficult to understand. Both had phonemic awareness problems.

 

My ten yo's phonemic awareness problems have been remediated, and I'm still working on that with my six year old. One thing I did (besides Barton and LiPS) that I think really helped with my 10 yo's speech was go through common words written on cards. That was to help him with reading, but as he read them, I corrected how he pronounced them. He also started piano lessons about the same time, but he's never had singing lessons. Voice lessons are on my wish list for my whole family. :)

Edited March 21, 2012 by merry gardens

[PeterPan]

Just as an observation, sometimes a speech delay that doesn't get improvement with regular speech therapy is actually misdiagnosed verbal apraxia. If you get an apraxia eval by someone who specializes in it, might turn it up. Verbal apraxia is readily treated with PROMPT.

[Dmmetler]

I have a fairly severe articulation disorder (re-DXed as an adult as constructive Apraxia), and am a professional musician-and have ALWAYS had a much easier time articulating sounds in singing than in speech. I don't know why. For example, I can do the Italian rolled /r/ in singing just fine-but cannot, even after years of therapy, consistently say it in speech.

 

In my case, it takes focused effort and energy to say a sound correctly-it's not that I'm trying to be lazy-it's that, outside of a few settings when I'm specifically focusing on speech, I simply don't have the energy and effort to put into making sure I've got /r/ instead of something halfway between an /r/ and a /w/, /s/ instead of /th/ and so on. And that's after 16 years of therapy!

[atara]

I would have them simply sing at home, but quality stuff with good diction.

Examples would be music from (I use pandora.com) Fiddler on the Roof, Julie Andrews (SOUND OF MUSIC), and Phantom of the Opera (Sarah Brightman).

[bluedarling]

But maybe when they are little older/further along? My dd11 had speech delay, but is mostly over it, now. I'm about to start her in voice lessons. She doesn't have the best "ear", but then neither do I, and we both absolutely love to sing. Singing does force you to "listen", but you have fun at the same time. I don't know why we are so drawn to singing when its obviously not a strength...but we are! Reading helps, too, and like reading, singing probably progresses a little slow at first. So...where someone else might ger benefit from a few voice lessons....we're probably looking at long term lessons to see any benefit. The music pastor at our church gives our lessons (and while I'm sure he'd rather have singing stars...he's never turned us away. It is income, after all.) You may have to go through a few coaches, though, to find one who is willing to work with slower progress. (My first coach made negative comments that maybe I should try piano instead....good sign to move on.)

[hsmom2011]

Singing helped my dd tremendously with stuttering issues, where speech therapy did very little.