AboutSharon Rosen Lopez Expertise I am happy to answer questions about speech and language development in children.
Experience I have close to 30 years experience working as a pediatric speech/language pathologist, and have worked with infants and children through 18 years of age.
Organizations NY Speech/Language/Hearing Assocation
The American Speech/Language/Hearing Association
The Westchester Speech/Language/Hearing Association
Education/Credentials BA University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisc
MA University of Washington, Seattle, Wa.
i am acutely aware that i promised you that i would not be knocking on your doorstep any more. howsoever, here i am breaking my word [horrors...something neither my son nor i ever do!!] why, you ask? in all honesty, i felt compelled to write you once more, if only to thank you and tell you how impressed i am with you. after i read your last response, i went to your two websites, and i was able to witness your prolific body of work. i am in awe of you, to have accomplished so much and have extended yourself to help so many people.
it is nice to know there are people like you out there who give so unstintingly of themselves, and i, for one, am very grateful. thank you for being you.
p.s. i wanted to let you know that in exploring my son's articulation, i can see now that there is reason to be concerned, and thus, i do see the importance of having this addressed soon. thank you for helping clarify this.
i also wanted to seek some clear understanding of one other thing if you do not mind...in listening more intently now, and in using some of the words you listed, it appears that his major problem is the final "s" [the example i gave you was hou for house...eye for eyes, i for ice, plea for please... so even before i asked you [and after you gave me information] i am having him do it in two syllables, and he can clearly do this, but he can not yet put them together. as an example, he can say sassi very clearly, but when i asked him to say sass, he says sa
i apologize for imposing on you, but i wanted to find out very specifically if this is what you were saying to do...have him say it in two syllables, and then keep trying to get him to say it together?
would it be a further imposition to ask you what is the etiology of this?
sharon, i apologize for the verbosity of my email, and yet, as i am sure you know, it is an awesome responsibility raising children and doing the best we can for them. thus, once again, i want to express my appreciation to you.
Answer Hi J,
Thanks for your nice comments -- appreciated!
You might try having your son say the first syllable, and hold the word final 's' at the end...so that it's like another syllable in a way. So it would be: hou..(pause)..ssssss; i....(pause)....ssss (ice); mi...sss, ki....sss, pa...sss, me....ss, etc. (We would not include 'please' in this list because it ends with a 'z' sound, just like 'nose' and 'toes'. With words ending with a 'z' sound, you'd do the same drill, only separately from the 's' drill). Then, work slowly --using drill -- towards seeing if he can imitatively reduce, and eventually delete entirely the pause between the syllables. I would use a fairly long list of common words ending in 's' so that your son's muscles can build up a bit of muscle memory for the coordinating oralmotor pattern. I think I mentioned in a previous note that playing a game during speech drill work helps to keep a child engaged though the entire 30-minute process! Again, the 30-minute duration of a speech session helps with reinforcing oralmotor patterning and auditory processing/awareness of the target sound/speech pattern.
Unfortunately, without having your son in front of my eyes, it's really impossible for me to trouble shoot all the things that might interfere with this drill working for him. I hope this tip helps.
One other thing you can do is to exaggerate in your own speech -- not excessively as to be obnoxious, but enough as to bring attention -- those word final 's' sounds in your spontaneous speech as you converse with your son. Again, this will help to bring his attention to this target speech pattern.
