As 2014 draws to a close, I am so proud of all the progress my young clients have made this year. In particular, I worked with a number of kids who were distorting their ‘s’, ‘sh’, ‘ch’ and ‘j’ sounds. As many therapists will attest, this type of speech problem can be very hard to fix. It is not your typical frontal lisp where having the kids close their front teeth and anchor their tongue down at the lower gum ridge usually works. With the lateralized lisp, the children are channeling the air out the sides and often have their tongues in the wrong positions as well. We have all heard that noisy, clicky, slushy sound and cringe when when we do because it sounds so distorted and unpleasant.
I am grateful to have the experience and expertise to treat this problem effectively by walking my clients through a progression of speech tasks which result in the production of clear ‘s’, ‘sh’, ‘ch’ and ‘j’ sounds. The look of joy on both the child’s and parent’s face is a pleasure to behold when the sounds comes out clearly for the first time ever.
