Making Halloween Count with a Speech Delay

With Halloween fast approaching, I wanted to give some tips for trick-or-treating and how to use this Holiday to build speech and language skills!

Lets start with kids who are more on the severe side.  If you child can't put two words together, has a low vocabulary, or isn't understandable due to articulation errors, Halloween can be a nightmare.  Pun intended.

Over stimulation, darkness, pressure to say "trick or treat" and "thank you" at every turn, and sugar highs!  Sounds like a perfect recipe for a tantrum and crappy Halloween pictures.   One great way to reduce the stress is to take the speaking part out.  I don't usually recommend NOT talking, but for really young kids with big speech problems, it can really make things go more smoothly.

For my preschoolers who may struggle with this, I made little signs for them to take out on Halloween night.  One side says "trick or treat" with a candy bag, the other side says "thank you!"  Using a picture card instead of words ensures that your child can participate in Halloween with minimal pressure and prevents a possible tantrum on a strangers porch.  Win win.

Sound like a great solution for you?  Print off these pictures (that I found for free from a google search) and tape them to a pencil or Popsicle stick and enjoy!

If your child can say "trick or treat" and "thank you," you can do some really great activities to build language and practice speech sounds.

SEQUENCING: Knowing the order of action is an important skill for telling stories, following directions, and retelling events (i.e. answering the "tell me what you did today" question).  Halloween is a perfect opportunity to practice sequencing!  I nabbed a few pics from google of each step of trick or treating (you can increase or decrease the number of steps based on your child's level.  Most preschoolers should do 3-4).

Go through each step together, then mix up the pictures and put them in the right order.  Have your child tell you what happens in each picture.  Then do a real live practice round.

This is also a strategy to reduce anxiety about Halloween.  You give your child a chance to know what will happen at every step, and what comes next.  Talk about unexpected things that might happen (What if someone jumps out and scares us?  What if it we fall down when we are walking?).

Step one : Put on your costume! The first thing we do is get dressed.  

Step 2: Second, we go to someone's door and knock or ring the door bell.

Step 3: Third, we wait for someone to answer and say "TRICK OR TREAT" (or hold up the sign).  Then we get one piece of candy.  We also say "Thank You!"

Step 4: Last, We walk to the next house! 

ARTICULATION PRACTICE: There are lots of ways to practice articulation during Halloween.  Here are some vocabulary words to practice based on common speech sound errors for preschoolers

P: Pumpkin, popcorn, porch
B: Bat, baby, black
H: Haunt, house, Halloween
K: Cat, candy, cobweb
G: Ghost, grave, goblin
F: Face paint, fang, fairy
M: Monster, mummy, moon

For more Halloween words to practice, go to this site.

Got Speech Probs? Start Here.

Talking is complicated.  First, you have to have something you want to say.  Then your brain has to send signals to your lungs to inhale, your voice box to begin buzzing (and alternate buzzing depending on which sounds you want to make), your soft palate to either relax or close of air to your nose, and your tongue, cheeks, lips, and jaw to coordinate their movements to shape speech sounds.  If there is any sort of interference in this process, your message doesn't come out right!

The tongue is especially important, because just a few millimeters of space can change an /s/ sound into a /th/ sound.  Make the /r/ sound right now, and think about what shape your tongue is in.  Where are the sides of your tongue?  The back? The tip? The middle?  Now try to describe that shape to a 3 year old who uses /w/ instead of /r/.  It's no simple task.

Luckily, we aren't going to be working on the /r/ sound (one of the most difficult sounds to produce) just yet.  In fact, for now, lets get even more simple.  Voicing.

Voicing divides sounds into two groups: "Voice On" sounds, and "Voice Off" sounds.  A sound is a voice on sound if you activate your voice box to make it.  Put your hand on your voice box and say these sounds: /v, z, m, l, g, b/.  These are all voice on sounds!  Now put your hand on your voice box and say theses sounds: /p, h, s, sh, ch/.  These are all voice off sounds.  If you are feeling a buzz on the voice off sounds, it's because you are adding the "uuuh" sound at the end.  /P/ doesn't say "puhhh."  You have to make sure you are turning leaving your voice off and just making the sound by itself. 

This week, I want you to help your child be more aware about voicing.  I will be using "voice on/off" to describe their speech sounds during therapy, and it will really reinforce what we work on this week! Think about the sounds your child struggles with and focus on those.  Are they voice on or off? 

There are lots of ways to do this that don't take much time.  I'll give you some ideas and you can pick what you think will work best for you and your child.

1. Let them feel your voice box when it's on and off.  Then let them feel their own.  Make it silly and fun by tapping on your voice box while saying "aaah."

2. Have them evaluate if a sound is "voice on" or "voice off."  I like to use the thumbs up/thumbs down so they don't feel pressure to talk or get it right.  You make the sound, and if it's voice on, have them give the thumbs up.  If it's voice off, have them give the thumbs down.  Take a turn being the judge, and get a few wrong on purpose.  Let your child correct you, it will build their sound-knowledge confidence!  If they don't correct you, you can say something like "Waaaait...that do that one again and let me feel your voice.  I was wrong!  That's a voice off sound!"

3.  Incorporate a voice on/voice off discussion when talking about animal sounds.  Is the snake sound voice on or off?  Is the cow sound voice on or off?  It can be hard to think of "voice off" animals.  Most animal sounds are voice on, but it will still bring awareness.

4.  Try making voice on sounds as loud as you can.  Do the same with voice off sounds.  Talk about how it's hard for a sound to be loud unless you turn your voice on!

5. When practicing alphabet letters, say the sounds and figure out if they are voice on or voice off.  It's a great way to practice both academics and speech at the same time!

It's simple, but starting with a good knowledge base about how sounds are made will make teaching and practicing so much easier in the future!

Is that Normal??

I hear this one a lot, so I want to set some bounds of what is and is not "normal" by outlining speech basic speech and language development.  This doesn't have every milestone, but it will give you a general idea of what communication skills we see at each age.

For those who want to cut to the chase, here is the too-long-didn't-read version:

By age 5 most kids are 100% understandable (or intelligible, referring to speech sound errors) and sound pretty much like an adult (referring mainly to grammar).  If your child is not one of those two things, its probably NOT normal. 

I was going to create an awesome info graphic about language development based on the norms given by the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, but I found this one and why reinvent the wheel?  I found it at North Shore Pediatric Therapy's website.

 Take a look and find what your child CAN do, then go through and see what they struggle with.  The last section has some ways to improve your child's language skills, and will will go into more depth on those techniques as the year goes on.

If you have specific questions about diagnosis, you should really consult with a speech pathologist.  This is just a great way to identify possible areas of need and make you aware of communication skills your child has already mastered.

Let me know what your main area of concern is.  What skill is your highest priority when working on speech goals this year?