Speech Therapy And Early Childhood Speech Difficulties

Learning to speak is one of the biggest tasks a young child has to face. In fact, as an individual function, learning to talk may be the biggest, right up there with learning to walk. Kids spend a lot of time learning to listen to, understand and imitate speech. It’s only natural that sometimes they might have speech difficulties that need intervention. After all, they’ve never done this before.

If your child mispronounces words, or does not make sounds correctly, he or she gets frustrated when people don’t understand. Whether your child stutters or seems to talk in a different language that only makes sense to her, the inability to speak clearly and fluently causes problems for your child every day.

Simply having a conversation comes easy to most of us, and we do not always understand how hard it is for our kids when they can’t speak well. Fortunately, there are speech services available through schools and local agencies, and many children can get free speech therapy.

A trained child speech therapist will diagnose your child’s speech impediment and create a personalized treatment plan to help your child retrain the muscles and learn how sounds are supposed to be formed.

Many kids with speech problems actually do not hear sounds correctly, so they can’t form them correctly in speech. These kids may also have trouble reading, because the sounds simply don’t make sense to them.

A speech therapist can help your child with all of these problems and help them communicate. If your child has severe speech difficulties, speech therapy may be the best first course of treatment.

If your child has a mild stutter or stammer that developed after he learned to speak, or if she speaks fairly clearly except for a stammer, you may prefer to enroll your child in a speech course, either one-to-one or in a group. With older children, you may also choose to work with your child using a self-help speaking DVD or book.

Developmental speaking disorders are usually best treated by a speech therapist, who can develop a plan for the child’s speech treatment. You can work with your child at home using exercises assigned by the speech therapist, and your child can practice outside of school. In fact, your child should be practicing the principles learned in speech therapy whenever she talks to anyone. Using the new techniques is vital to learning them.

Whether to enroll your child in speech therapy or use a home-study course is a big question, and one that you must answer for your own child. Every case is different. If you have questions about speech therapy, ask to meet with the speech therapist at your child’s school, and get some input into what would best server your child.

Remember that this is not a permanent, irrevocable decision. If you start out working with your child at home, and feel you’re not making progress, you can always ask for help. And you can always work with your child at home if you feel she’s not responding to speech therapy.