Facing Speech Problems? Learn About Speech Therapist & Various Treatments Available

Speech and language therapy is a program aimed at enhancing speech and language skills as well as oral motor functions. It is a treatment procedure to improve communication problems through habilitation or rehabilitation. Such defects may originate in the brain, the ear, or anywhere along the vocal tract and may affect the voice, articulation, language development, or ability to speak after language is learned.

For children who have started talking but are not clear can work on making their speech clearer. They can start learning new words in order to boost their language skills, forming and talking in full sentences, or enhancing their listening skills. Whereas, children who do not start speaking organically may have to learn sign language.

Speech Therapy Exercises & Activities

There are many ways by which you can help your child or adults to learn, understand, and use words. No matter the origin of the client’s problem, speech therapists offer activities and exercises that can make the client’s daily life easier. SLPs work to figure out what kind of speech problem a person has. Remember, though, that therapy can’t cure your child. The underlying speech development issue will still be there. They determine the cause & provide the best treatment.

SLPs can help with:

Specialties of Speech-Language Pathology

A Speech Pathologist offers a full range of speech, language, and swallowing services for people of all ages. SLPs work to prevent, diagnose, and treat speech in children and adults. A lot of people think that speech-language pathology is associated with treating people who stammer or stutter.

They may provide treatment for people who suffer from either mild, dyslexia, moderate or severe learning difficulties, cleft lip and palate language delay, stammering, specific language disability, specific troubles in constructing sounds, hearing loss, social interaction struggles, voice disorders, and selective autism.

Speech-language pathologists are particularly educated specialists who evaluate and treat individuals with speech, language, communication and swallowing disorders that occur in all ages, from kids to the old-age. These specialists have a master’s degree or doctorate in this field, as well as a proper certification which makes them treat a wide range of delays and disorders.

SLPs treat many types of communication and swallowing problems. These include problems with:

How Do Speech Therapists Work?

The Speech Pathologist helps your child with rhyming and with identifying the beginning sounds in words. It can work on helping your child understand the meaning of what he reads. They help to improve social communication and pay attention to the other person’s tone of voice, body language, and emotions. Stuttering is a communication disorder that affects speech fluency.

SLPs can teach your child strategies on how to control this behavior and thus increasing his speech fluency and intelligibility. Cognitive-communication disorders usually happen as a result of a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or dementia, although they can be congenital, so they help to recover it. They teach your child to speak in longer sentences and to share more details that help your kids combine their ideas in sentences.

Steps included in the speech and language therapy are:

• Identify the speech and communication difficulty
• Advice careers on implementing a treatment programme
• Write confidential client case notes and reports, as well as information for clients, careers and other professionals
• Manage all cases while taking into account priority cases, waiting lists, successful outcomes, referral and discharge of service
• Provide a suitable treatment program, working on a one-to-one basis or in groups, to enable each of your clients to improve as much as possible
• Monitor and evaluate your client’s progress
• Determine the cause and nature of the problem

Speech Therapy For Adults

Adults may experience speech and language difficulties for a variety of reasons. Speech-language Pathology aims for an individual to develop or get back effective communication skills at its optimal level. Recovery through speech treatment depends on the case and various of your problem, especially if your speech problem is acquired, means you had normal speech skills before you had face any incident that caused your current speech problem; thus, you may or may not get back your old level of speech function.

For communication difficulties, you will be asked about the nature of your difficulties, their impact on you, and their origin. The Speech and Language Therapist will then look at various aspects of language by asking questions and showing you pictures. Once they have assessed all the relevant aspects of language they will then formulate a diagnosis and therapy plan.

Here are some beneficial exercises for adults who are suffering from the speech problem:

• Tongue In-and-Out – Stick your tongue out for 2 seconds and pull it back in. Now, hold it in for 2 seconds and repeat the process.
• Tongue Side-to-Side – Open your mouth and touch the right corner of your mouth by your tongue for 2 seconds, after this, touch the left corner of your mouth by your tongue for 2 seconds and repeat it.
• Tongue Up-and-Down – Open your mouth and reach your tongue up toward your nose. Hold your tongue there for 2 seconds and after this reach your tongue down to your chin. Hold your tongue there for 2 seconds and repeat the process.
• Smiling – To get improvement in controlling your lips, practice smiling. Smile and then relax in front of a mirror, repeat this process as much as you can. We recommended using a mirror because it provides feedback of you practicing.
• Kissy Face – After practicing smiles, start making kissy face by puckering the lips. Pucker both the lips and relax and repeat this process for 10 times.
• Consonant & Vowel Pairing Repetition – Start practicing of making sounds by taking a consonant that you have got difficulty in saying and then pair it with each vowel(A, E, I, O, U). For instance, suppose you always have difficulty in saying “r” sound, in this case, pair “r” with each vowel like “ra”, “re”, “ri”, “ro”, “ru”.
• Speech Therapy Apps – These apps will help you in assessing your recent ability levels and assigning exercise that targets the areas where you have a problem. These are very helpful for those who suffer from aphasia after stroke.
• Games – Try computer games like Alchemy or Solitaire to improve your comprehension and visual processing. Play word games like crossword puzzles and word searches to improve your problem-solving skills and visual processing. If you practice these games regularly, they will definitely improve your speech and language problems.

There is a number of reason speech difficulties occur in adults:

• Mental health issues
• Learning disorders
• Physical disabilities
• Aphasia
• Hearing impairment
• Dysarthria
• Stuttering
• Traumatic Brain Injury
• Neck or throat cancer
• Socializing problems followed by auditory disorder
• Conditions like stroke or dementia

Speech Therapy For Kids

Every baby may not speak like the same; every child is a different way to express their emotion. But there are speech therapy activities for toddlersthat you can do to help your child learn to talk. A child between the ages of 18 months and 3 years will generally mispronounce many words. There are many speech therapy exercises or activities kids which help to improve their communication such as Flashcards, Mirror Exercises, Frog Hop, Guess Who? And many more.

If the problem is not pronunciation but rather that your child isn’t talking or is talking very little, you should act a little more quickly and contact a Child Speech Pathologist. Since each patient with a speech disorder is unique, such therapy will have to be according to the needs of the individual.

Here are some At-Home Activities for your baby that you can try to motivate your baby to do tasks and exercise which can improve their speech problem:

• Use a Counter – You can get a counter device from a sporting goods sport which is a round small object with a single button. Assign a goal for your child and instruct him to push the button every time he does the skill correctly. The counter goes up by one every time he pushes the button.
• Bankruptcy Game – Put some plastic coins in a bag and color on of them red. After each task, your child and you both will pull a coin out. If any of you two pulls a red coin, he/she have to put all the previous collected coins back in the bag (Bankrupt). The winner will be decided on the basis of who is having the most coin at the end of the game.
• Hold Yoga Poses – You can get pictures of yoga poses for kids on the internet easily. Tell your child to choose one pose and hold on to it while he does his skill. Check out how many repetitions of a task he can do before losing the pose.
• Trace Lines or Shapes – On a piece of paper, draw some lines or shapes and laminate the page. After this, tell your child to trace the shapes or lines with a dry erase marker. When he completes the task, erase and use next time again.
• Putting Blocks on Tower – Every time your child completes a task, give him a block to place atop of the tower and when the tower falls, start it over. Check out how tall he can make the tower before it falls.
• Play Hopscotch – Draw a hopscotch track on the ground and tell your child to do the task once before each move on the track or each jump.
• Turtle Race – At least 2 people are needed for this game and you can be the second person if you want. Both people should have to sit on their bottoms with knees in the air. Every time your child completes a task, everyone moves forward one scoot. Whoever gets the farthest in 5 minutes with bottom stayed on the ground and without jumping will win.
• Moving Beans or Marbles – Get two small empty containers and fill one of them with marbles or beans. With each completion of a task, move one marble or bean to the empty container and repeat it till all of them are moved.
• Make Me Jump – Each time when your child completes a task, jump or if you cant, make some other person do it or any other action as a sign of appreciation. Check how many times your child can make you jump.
• Playdough – Get your child some playdough or any other similar substance for every task completed. Tell your child that once he had all of the playdough, he can play with it.
• Tickle Me – Start this activity by placing your hand on your child’s head or toes and with each completed task slightly move your hand closer to his belly. When your hand gets to his belly, tickle him. Start over and repeat it until the 5 minutes is up.
• Stoplight Speech – While you are at a red stoplight, tell your child to do a task and check out how many of them he completed before turning the red light into green.

Following are some issues that can be a reason for speech difficulties:

• Learning Difficulty
• Mispronounces Vowels
• Physical Disability
• Language Delay
• Difficulties in Sound Production
• Hearing Problems
• Cleft Palate
• Stammering
• Autistic Spectrum Disorders
• Dyslexia
• Voice Disorders
• Selective Mutism

Where Can I Find Speech-Language Pathologist?

It is important to confirm that the speech-language therapist who is going to treat you or your child, is a certified therapist. Here, certification means that the speech-language therapist must have at least a master’s degree in the related field and should have passed a national examination. The therapist must be licensed in your state and should have experience working with kids and their specific disorder. Following are some areas where you can find a Speech-Language Therapist:

• Private practices
• Physicians’ offices
• Hospitals
• Schools
• Colleges and universities
• Rehabilitation centers, long-term and residential health care facilities

Following are some points which will help you to get rid of speech difficulties and improve better:

What You Can Expect From Speech Therapy?

A child’s treatment with the speech therapist can last for months or a few years depending on your child needs. Remember, the therapy can’t cure your child but after during treatment, you will probably see improvement in your child’s issues.

The therapist should give you and your child strategies to deal with difficulties more effectively. They will likely give you activities to practice at home to reinforce the skills your child is learning. Kids who make the most progress tend to be those who get their parents involved in their treatment.

It is a proven fact that parental involvement is important in the success of a child’s progress in speech or language therapy. The process of overcoming a speech disorder or language disorder can take some extra effort and time, so it is important that all family members be understanding and patient with the child.

At HearingSol speech and hearing clinic, we believe in creating a comfortable and welcoming environment for our patients. Our aim is to improve the quality of life of all individuals with communication difficulties. We are here to listen to your worries, answer your queries and provide the best possible care to each patient and their unique needs. At our hearing clinic, we have made sure that individual therapy sessions are available for all clients, whether adults or kids.