Ming cautions parents against assuming oral motor problems cause limited speech in young children. A two-year-old making few sounds might have language delays, hearing issues, or other causes that need proper diagnosis from a speech therapist. Oral motor exercises alone rarely improve speech without addressing the underlying problem.
Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com I'm a speech therapist to help you teach your child at home during these quarantine times. So recently, I got a question from a parent, and she said, my son has oral motor issues. And I'm like, okay, how do you know? And she told me that her son was two and seven months, and he can only do a few sounds. Okay. So this is where you have to be careful. Okay. Because at two and seven months, there are a lot of reasons. There are a lot of issues that you may or may not know that actually cause your child not being able to communicate with you. Okay. And jumping to a conclusion where you think it's an oral motor issue from your point of view is dangerous because you really have to check everything to pinpoint that. Okay. It really is an oral motor issue. And why we want to know is because you don't want to teach your child. Some oral motor patterns are practiced just because they can't say certain words or they're not talking to you nicely or their speech clarity is low. There are a lot of reasons why your child cannot speak to you right now. Okay. And by the sound of it, that parents. When I asked more questions, it told me that actually her child had problems with language, meaning he couldn't use specific sounds, specific actions for specific events. Okay. It was always the same sounds over and over. Okay. Is there a chance that it might be an oral motor issue? Yes. Is teaching your child some oral motor patterns going to help them the most? Probably not. Okay. And the reason why I say this is because this parent asked specifically for my help because she wanted to know what oral motor exercises will help her child. But be careful because, you know, there are. I know it looks like you're doing a lot when you're, you know, chewing on, like, a talk tools chewy tube, or if you're doing, like, blowing a flute or something or a horn that, you know, you're actually working out the muscles that they need to use for speech, then I would challenge you to think about, is this really something that you want to teach your child right now? Okay. There are many things that you can do. First of all, as I always say in this channel, you should teach some kind of gestures, some kind of sign language. If your child cannot communicate with sounds yet, okay. This helps your child a lot because now they can communicate with specific actions and tell you what they want without, you know, being needing to, like, guess all the time. You also have to remember that oral motor skills, abilities doesn't really translate to speech clarity that much. Right. I have a client who is not able to stick her tongue out, is not able to move her tongue left and right, but she can speak totally clear. 100%. You can hear her speak? 100%. All right. I have a client who cannot blow the flute, the horn from talk tools for like, 15 seconds, and then he can. He can still speak in long sentences. Does it mean that talk tools are worthless? No, totally not. They have their place. They're useful. I use it myself. Don't get get me the wrong way, but there are some times where, you know, as a parent, you might think that, hey, I see that person doing the talk tools thing. I see this person, you know, doing some more oral motor exercises that seem useful for the child. But you have to remember again that oral motor ability doesn't equal to speech abilities. Right? So you have to find a speech therapist that can tell you who can ask, assess, and make a differential diagnosis, meaning they can tell you exactly. Okay. What your child can and cannot do. What the hypothesis is, why are they having, like, a speech clarity issue or, like, is there a language issue going on as well? They are able to tell you the difference why they're performing like that. Okay. If it really is a muscle weakness in the mouth, all right, or the jaw, lip, and tongue, then yeah, of course, go do some oral motor. That would be beneficial. If it's not, then, you know, work on other things. You know, check other sounds if it's there. Right. See if they can use language at the level of which their peers are, which we call age appropriateness. Right. If, you know, if that is still, if that's not in place, then work on the language first. Don't worry about speech so much at the moment in time. Okay? There is a place and time for that. And the last thing I want to tell you is, is that, yeah, oral motor stuff does help the child anyways, right? It's like doing some kind of exercise. There's all, all only benefits. But the problem is the transition, the generalization from that exercise doesn't come into the speech part if you don't do it correctly. Right. Give you an analogy. So if I want to learn how to run faster, right? And then I start do lunges every day, right? I start squatting and start lunging every day. My leg muscles get better, but my speed of running doesn't increase. What does that mean? I'm not applying force to the ground efficiently. I can only run faster if I practice running. And same as speech. You can only become better at talking clearly if you practice speaking. And that's the case with anyone. And especially for children who have a speech sound disorder. Okay, so that's the end of this video. And before we go, I want to give you a present. You can go to agentsofspeech.com checklist. It's a list of toys and tools that we recommend parents to get if they're. If they want to start home therapy right now during the pandemic. So go over there and grab it. And thank you for watching. I'll see you in the next one soon. Bye.
