There is a chance your child may experience speech and communication problems that may impact general development, including learning and social interaction. Common speech disorders may include stuttering and developmental expressive language disorder. A child with an expressive language disorder has trouble communicating with others, remembering words, and expressing thoughts and feelings. If your child has delayed or disordered speech, refer the matter to a speech therapy specialist. Your speech therapy Southlake specialist can help improve communication and speech problems that affect pronunciation and spoken and written language. A speech-language pathologist will examine and identify your child’s speech disorder and then decide on the right treatment plan.
Speech therapy can help treat various speech disorders such as fluency disorders, articulation disorders, expressive disorders, aphasia, dysarthria, and aphasia. For instance, aphasia is a disorder that affects how your child communicates. Therefore, your child will have trouble reading, speaking, writing, and comprehending a language. Your child may have aphasia due to a disease, brain tumor, stroke, or head injury affecting the part of the brain responsible for language and communication.
Consequently, below are tips you can try at home to help your child with speech therapy.
- Practice
If your kid has difficulty saying a particular sound, like “f,” encourage the child to make that sound frequently. Once that child has mastered how to pronounce a letter, let the child practice with its syllable, like fa-fa-fa, before practicing pronouncing the words it makes.
You can reward your child for mastering the pronunciation of different alphabetical letters and their words.
- Avoid distractions
Various studies show that watching too much television can affect speech and language development. Excessive TV watching can impair speech development since there is no sufficient time for talking between you and your child and your child and other people.
Speech therapy should happen in an environment with no distractions, such as noise from the radio and TV.
- Play games
You can play games and activities with your kid to enhance verbal and nonverbal communication. For instance, you can set up a mini karaoke at home and encourage your child to sing a favorite song. Also, you can give your child simple puzzles to solve and play peek-a-boo and board games.
Playing games with your child is an excellent way of encouraging speech and language development and expansion.
- Read
Always find time to read to your child and let the child read for you. If the book has graphics and the child cannot read, encourage the child to describe the things shown. For instance, you can name something on a book’s page, and the child points to it.
- Straws
Drinking through a straw can assist in building oral strength and tongue coordination. The sucking force can strengthen the development of mouth structures and thus help enhance communication.
- Listen
When you are listening, you give your child sufficient time to communicate with you. Do not interrupt your child’s speech; let the child take time to get words out. Being impatient and forcing the kid to spit out words may cause further anxiety, which can delay speech and language development.
Contact PediaPlex today to schedule an appointment with a pediatric speech therapy specialist.