HSMWB Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 I have a child who is sometimes very difficult to understand. I don’t think it is quite bad enough for $$$ speech therapy - but at the same time, I am starting to think it needs to be addressed is a systematic way. I can not pin-point exactly what sounds he is mid-pronouncing, it seems like sometimes he just is not enunciating his words or making an effort to communicate well. You know, making eye contact with the person, speaking loud enough to be heard, etc. I am wondering if there are any on-line resources on how to address something like this? I am not the only person who notices the difficulty in understanding his speech. Any ideas? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 We've had this trouble. I took the bull by the horns this year and bought a reader that was way below my kid's level for the sole purpose of reading aloud. Every day he worked slowly with me through one story (or portion of a story) and I'd stop him and make him say certain words again before he moved on. I made it clear that this is what we would be using the book for so that he wasn't under any pretense that it was for reading comprehension. Every month he worked on memorizing a new poem, too, to work on oration. Toward the end of the year he got to do a play on stage, which really made him hear what others were hearing from him. We narrowed down his speech impediments to not hitting the hard consonants hard enough ('t', 'd', and 'b' were especially bad with how he would gloss over them), and a true developmental impediment with the 'l' and 'r' sounds. By making him move his mouth more for the harder consonants he started being able to do better with that specific l/r sound problem, but it will still be a while before it goes away completely. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweet2ndchance Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 A good place to start would be MommySpeechTherapy.com and SuperStarSpeech.com. Most therapy offices in our area will do a free evaluation to see if your child even needs services. If they don't do free evaluations in your area, the school district SPED services definitely will do it for free. All you have to do is submit a request for an evaluation to the SPED coordinator for the school district. It could be helpful to have a professional tell you exactly what it is that is making your child's speech hard to understand. At least then you have a better idea of how to help them if you know what you are dealing with. I know my youngest son's SLP, which he sees on an IEP through the schools even though we homeschool, takes on clients just through the summer to bridge the gap for her income wise and to help the kids she works with during the school year keep up and not backslide over the summer. She bills our insurance for it but she also does sliding scale fees for those that would have to pay out of pocket. I'm not sure how much she charges but I know she has a full schedule all summer and more kids apply than she has slots for so I can't imagine it is too unreasonable. Even if you only do a summer session, an SLP can help narrow down the speech issue your child has and give you lots of ideas for working with them at home or after summer therapy ends. Well worth the time and any money spent on it IMO. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mumto2 Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 Ds needed to become much clearer and was motivated by wanting to be able to verbally communicate with his computer. Some was mumbling, some letter sounds needed to be clearer. There were lots of little issues but learning to enunciate was the main problem. We gave him a mini recorder and each day Ds read a couple of sentences from a literature textbook, listened, and tried again. He really needed to hear it for himself. He spent roughly 2 hours a week working on his speaking over roughly 6 months. He is very clear and confident now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsuga Posted May 1, 2018 Share Posted May 1, 2018 On 4/28/2018 at 11:11 AM, HomeAgain said: We've had this trouble. I took the bull by the horns this year and bought a reader that was way below my kid's level for the sole purpose of reading aloud. Every day he worked slowly with me through one story (or portion of a story) and I'd stop him and make him say certain words again before he moved on. I made it clear that this is what we would be using the book for so that he wasn't under any pretense that it was for reading comprehension. Every month he worked on memorizing a new poem, too, to work on oration. Toward the end of the year he got to do a play on stage, which really made him hear what others were hearing from him. We narrowed down his speech impediments to not hitting the hard consonants hard enough ('t', 'd', and 'b' were especially bad with how he would gloss over them), and a true developmental impediment with the 'l' and 'r' sounds. By making him move his mouth more for the harder consonants he started being able to do better with that specific l/r sound problem, but it will still be a while before it goes away completely. Was this for all mumbling or specific sounds? I need to correct an S. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted May 1, 2018 Share Posted May 1, 2018 8 hours ago, Tsuga said: Was this for all mumbling or specific sounds? I need to correct an S. Mostly for mumbling. He had started to race over words and skip half the consonants. It was painful to try to decipher what he was trying to say. But until I sat down and tried to figure out the problem I just thought he forgot how as his mouth grew and he started losing teeth. We worked on a lot of the individual sounds when we did phonics years ago. For certain lessons I sat there with a mirror figuring out how my mouth moved, where I was placing my tongue or lips, so that we could do the sound together with a handheld magnifying mirror (I got it at the Dollar Tree) and I could teach him just how it should go. Mostly worked, lol, but still working on L and R! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HSMWB Posted May 1, 2018 Author Share Posted May 1, 2018 Thanks for the ideas and suggestions on how to go forward. Hopefully this will help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SanDiegoMom Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 I appreciate the help too! My daughter is 12 and I still haven't addressed this issue very well and it's the exact same thing -- she speaks too fast and drops all the hard consonants. I see that she's got a small palate and her big teeth probably cause some issue, but this has been going on since she was little with baby teeth so I don't know. I am starting to make her read aloud every day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angie in VA Posted May 2, 2018 Share Posted May 2, 2018 I had/have a mumbler. When this one hit high school the child's competitiveness in general and the desire to earn coveted speaker points in team policy debate rounds in particular made enunciation a priority. I will never forget when this kid finished 1st in speaker points out of 52 debaters. Didn't change things at home though. Grrr. On a more serious note, I've seen kids who stuttered and mumbled improve at speech and debate club. The littlest start out reciting a short poem. One girl got one line out her first year. Now she's amazing. Love the looks of Mommy Speech Therapy link above! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanaqui Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 You say it's not enough to pay for speech therapy but, if you're in the US, the schools must provide this even if you're not enrolled. Do you think that might be worth looking into? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.