How Can a Speech and Language Therapist Help My Child to Talk?

The fact is that all children are born not knowing how to talk. While this may sound like a ridiculous statement, it is made to underscore a very important fact and that is that your child must learn to speak a language in his or her first four or five years of life. Granted, they won't speak eloquently but the fact that they learn what they do is quite amazing in its self.

So Much more is Now Known

So if your child is saddled with a speech impediment, no matter how sever, it's making an already difficult task that much harder. So is there cause for alarm because after all, things like minor lisps and stutters are quite common and for the most part all do pass with time. Even so, is it fair to the child when so much is now known about therapies that can assist your child in overcoming a childhood speech impediment.

Long Term Social and Psychological Implications

Always bear in mind that also it can be very detrimental in the long run for any child to look, act or sound different than his or her peers. So even if a speech impediment is mild and your child is making improvements on his or her own, it is important that you as a parent do what you can to hasten the recovery process. After all with all that is now known it just makes too much sense not to take advantage of it.

Effective Treatments for Stuttering

Take stuttering as an example. This is a mysterious speech impediment that can pass on its own in small children with time alone or it can become a problem that can carry on long into adulthood. Today more than ever before new discoveries are finally unlocking the doors that lead to its cure and one of these new therapies centers around relaxation methods.

Relaxation Therapies Do Work

You see, the truth is that most stutterers can in fact speak perfectly under certain circumstances and pretty much virtually all of them can sing perfectly as well. Intensive research into understanding why this is so has been underway for some time. New treatments basically teach the person to relax and duplicate the conditions that they talk perfectly under. Of course it does take time and commitment but these methods are achieving results.

Other Effective Treatment Methods

Other new Therapy Methods involve basically re-teaching a child to talk again from the beginning. Sound odd? Well it all basically involves teaching a child or adult a new way of talking very slowly. Now the fact is that when talking in a slow controlled fashion most people who normally stutter speak quit well.

It Takes Time and Commitment

Of course the patient is not left to talk this way the rest of their lives. Rather, once they're trained to talk slowly and without a stutter, they are then taught again to gradually begin to pick up the pace of their speech. Eventually if all goes well, in time they'll be back to conversing at a normal speed only without the stutter. Once again this method does take time and commitment but when done correctly it does produce results.

Pauls Harrisons writes for Integrated Treatment Services. Offering Speech and Language Therapist services throughout the UK. Visit their website for more details.

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