Speech and language assessment: Looking in depth and determining the child’s strengths and weaknesses in all areas of communication, including play and interaction skills, attention and listening, understanding words and language, using words and language, social communication, pronunciation and talking.This is a parent-based program which focuses on reinforcement and rewards and requires the parents to spend time talking with their child each day. Lidcombe Program for children up to 7-8 years.Speech Therapy approaches and activities that can support the child with a stutter and/or their carers include: Praise the child when they say something fluently.
Get down to the child’s level when they are speaking with you to show that you are interested in what they have to say (i.e.Avoid telling your child to stop, slow down or ‘think about what you want to say’.Avoid commenting on the stutter or bringing attention to it.Slow down your own speech when talking to the child.turning TVs and music off, especially during talking times). Reduce activity and background noise at home (e.g.Make sure they know they have plenty of “airspace” in which to say what they want to say.Give the child space and time to formulate what they want to say.Management strategies that support the child with a stutter (at preschool, school and/or home): School age children will often report feeling embarrassed when they have to read out aloud or talk in front of the class.Stuttering can have a great affect on a child’s confidence when speaking and may affect their social skills or how they relate to others.Sometimes they will pretend they have forgotten what to say or remain quiet. The child may also re-arrange their words and sentences to avoid a stutter.The child may avoid situations in which the stutter is worse or hide their stuttering by choosing words on which they are less likely to stutter.The impact of stuttering on a child is highly individual such that a mild stutter may cause one child extreme frustration and/or anxiety while a more severe stutter in another child may not affect them at all. A stutter can range from being mild to being very severe.For some children, a stutter only occurs in specific situations, such as talking on the telephone or talking in front of groups. For most children, stuttering occurs over a number of activities at home, school and in play.“Secondary” physical signs, such as blinking, leg slapping and facial movements when they are trying to get out a word.Ĭommon difficulties often (but not always) experienced by the child with a stutter:.Frustration because talking takes a lot of effort.They are also used intentionally to delay the initiation of a word the speaker expects to “get stuck on”. Interjections, such as “um” or “like” can occur particularly when they contain repeated (“um- um- um”) or prolonged (“uuuum”) speech sounds.After some effort the person may complete the word. This is when the mouth is positioned to say a sound, sometimes for several seconds, before the sound is said. Blocking or struggling to get words out.Prolongations or stretching of speech sounds (e.g.“wha…wha… what are you….you….you d.d…d….d.doing”). Repetitions of sounds, parts of words and whole words (e.g.Speech containing stuttering may include: What are the common features of stuttering? However these are usually brief and generally do not cause a problem. Most people produce disfluencies in their speech. It is characterised by specific types of disruptions or disfluencies in the production of speech sounds that occur regularly and impact on communication. It begins during childhood and can continue right through a person’s life. Stuttering is something that affects the fluency or flow of speech.