Speech and language pathologists are specialists at helping children with speech and communication issues. They are trained and equipped to assist with a variety of articulation delays. This can range from minor conditions like lisps and stuttering to more serious issues caused by hearing impairment, motor speech disorders, developmental delays, Down syndrome, autism, and more.
If you are a parent or caregiver of a child with these issues, a speech therapist can help them overcome their communication and speech difficulties more effectively.
Better intelligibility and articulation
Phonemes or individual sounds that make up speech, depend on the precise ability to move the articulators, tongue, jaw, lips, and palate. The intelligibility of speech directly depends on the ability to correctly articulate. If a child is having articulation issues it can prevent you or others from understanding them.
It is the job of a speech language therapist to help a child overcome these difficulties and articulate sounds needed for speech intelligibility.
Overcoming Stuttering
Stuttering can have a huge impact on a child’s self esteem and negatively impact their quality of life. Typically, muttering starts in childhood and hinders effective communication. Stuttering demonstrates in the form of breaks in the flow of speech. It is frequently accompanied by other behaviors such as tension in the neck, clenched fists, tics, or other physical actions.
The training of a speech therapist specifically studies stuttering and works with children to reduce these manifestations and help them improve their fluency and speech intelligibility.
Effective Listening
Children with speech issues and developmental delays tend to understand speech much better than they communicate. By developing effective listening skills, as wells as new vocabulary, can dramatically improve their communication.
Helping your child effectively articulate and learn listening skills is what a speech pathologist is trained for.
Effective expression
So much of communication is accomplished in an expressive process, relevant facial expressions, body language cues and gestures
A speech pathologist can a help a child learn semantic structure, inculcate these abilities and the idiosyncrasies of our language.
If you are looking for a speech therapist to help your child, contact First Words Speech Therapy. We are dedicated to providing personalized care to meet your child’s speech and language needs.
