What is a Speech Disorder? Learn with a Speech Therapist

Hey, this is Ming here, a speech therapist from agentsofspeech.com today we're talking about speech disorder and what it is, okay? So this can happen to people of all age, right? It could be an adult. It could be a kid. But today, we're focusing on those that affect children, because, after all, agents of speech is all about teaching children how to talk and communicate and have fun with us, right? So speech sounds. Let's define what speech sound is. Are the sounds you're listening right now. Listening to right now from my mouth into your ears. Whilst the words and sentences are the message, we use speech sounds to carry the message over to you, right? So the speech is a sound. Speech is the word we give it. Speech is the sound that we. We turn those words into audible, specific sounds that we can decode in our brain and understand what we're saying. So someone can have very bad speech, but at the same time, the language could be good, and therefore, they can write well and we can still understand them without listening or without them speaking. All right, so speech sounds are the sounds that you're hearing right now, okay? And a disorder is a condition that makes daily living difficult. It disrupts their daily living, okay? And communication is a pretty big thing within our daily activity, okay? So if we want something from someone, we still have to talk. If we want to express our wants and needs, we still will have to say something about it, right? No one is born with perfect speech sense, okay? No one was born, and suddenly they can talk like you do right now. The thing about it is, we go through a learning process, and there will be errors that are developmentally acceptable. Okay, what does that mean? Is that there are some sounds that are harder to acquire, and only at a certain age, we master it. For instance, the S sound, like, which a lot of times will be stopped and become a T, what we call stopping. So it becomes like, if someone's name is Stacy, they can't say it until, like, five. That's still permissible. When they're six, they suddenly can say Stacy instead of dede. These are, like, permissible. And developmentally, okay, speech sound errors. And those are what we call. These patterns are what we call phonological processes. Don't worry. We'll talk about this more later. I know it's a little confusing, but at the same time, if you don't know whether there are some disordered sound patterns, phonological processes, or some speech errors that are totally. There's something we have to do about it or if it's Something that's permissible right now. Go see a speech therapist. Okay. I do not know. If you ask me, I need to listen for myself and take a look at how they produce it as well. All right, so let's talk about the reasons for speech disorders. Right now the first one and the most common one is what we call a phonological disorder. So what that means is it's a linguistic based speech disorder. What does that mean again? So remember when I talked about the phonological processes? Right? So the phonological processes means in each language we have our phonological system, meaning all the sounds that are inside of of the language. Right? So when a person isn't able to acquire those sounds and understand, identify and discriminate between the sounds. For give me give you example. So there are some children who will mix up between an F and a P. So if they say fish, they say bish. Right? So that could be a phonological disorder if they cannot use their receptively understand the difference between the F and a P. And you might say, dude, that's crazy, that's impossible. Right? Because the F and the P is so different. But actually for someone who doesn't really understand the phonological sounds, their awareness is very low. Phonologically is actually quite difficult for them. Okay. And it happens with, you know, non native speakers as well. Because if I'm speaking English or Chinese for that matter, and I speak the foreign language, I will bring the phonological sounds from a different language into the foreign language. And that's why there's like accents there. People say the sounds wrong and they say in the wrong tone as well. So that's why. Okay, so there are rules in the language. And, and when children have a phonological disorder which we call linguistic based, right. It's is because they cannot acquire those sounds. They don't understand the sounds within the language. Okay. So that's the most common one. And it comes with a lot of children who have a language delay or language disorder for that matter. Okay. The second most common is what we call articulation disorders. Okay, so what is that? Articulation disorders is just basically I'm going to simplify it and my colleagues are going to shake their heads, but I don't care as long as you understand. So articulation disorder means your articulator is your lip, your tongue, your jaw. Those articulators, they know how to go to the places and act in a way to create sounds. So for instance, if we're doing the l sound like that. Right. What does the tongue need to do in order to create that speech sound is by putting the tongue up top. All right, Wrong. Right behind the upper front teeth onto the bony structure right behind the upper front teeth. And that's what we call alveolar ridge. And your tongue needs to stay there, sustain there, and go. Right. So if someone doesn't know how to do that, doesn't know how to put the tongue there, then there might be that we can do about it and teach them the right placement of the articulators. Okay, so that's articulation disorder. So between articulation disorder and a phonological disorder, there's no real to say. There's no 100% of either disorder as far as we're concerned. It's more of a mix. So someone can not understand how a language system works and also don't know how to put the articulators where it is. Okay. It could happen at the same time. That's why you have to check both and that's why you have to see a speech therapist. All right? Okay. So the third thing is what we call like a sensory motor disorder. So why I put sense, we say sensory first is because, let's say if you go to the doctor, you get a teeth removed and they give you a painkiller, right? And then after the surgery, you get. Your whole mouth is numb, you're drooling, you can't talk. That's what happens if a child's sensory profile or like in general, they have a sensory problem around the mouth. That's why they cannot really talk that well, because you need to feel it in order to move there. And that's why it's called sensory motor. Sensory is always in front. So therefore this sensory motor disorders, there's loads of different things. It might be that their sensory is hyper or hyposensitive, meaning they feel too much or feel too little, or it might be that their motor is a little bit weak. And you see this a lot in children who have, for instance, cerebral palsy. Right. Or some sort of genetic disorder where they might have low, low muscle tone. And then that will affect how, how well they can speak. And this is where a lot of parents will say, oh, I'm going to do a lot more oral motor training or oral motor exercises. That's not going to 100% help. Because the best practice for speech sounds is to do the speech, is to say the words, is to keep on practicing. And yes, we will use supplementary or motor Exercises, because that's going to be a step down, let's say if they can't say the sound, let's say if they can't say like the T sound like, right. If I keep on doing, it's not going to allow them to say it. Right. So you need to step down and find something that can help them, prompt them towards that sound that you're. You're targeting. All right, okay. So. So the fourth reason is autism, Autism spectrum disorder. So there are loads, loads, loads of, I think most of the autistic population, I would believe, are actually okay in terms of articulation. Okay. There might be some idiosyncrasies towards, like, how they produce those sounds. But all in all, I think articulation or speech disorder is not part of their most prevalent symptoms. You know what I'm saying? So that's like autism can go either way. There's so many different variations because it's a spectrum disorder. Right. So for autistic people, from what I see at the very least is that their sensory profiles are all over the place. So that might constitute towards speech disorders. That's first of all, second of all, it also might affect their motor capabilities, and that might also make it look like articulation disorder as well. Okay, so that's that for autism spectrum disorder. Okay. The fifth one is structural based. Structural based is like, for instance, if you have a cleft palate, if you have a lip tie, a tongue tie that is structurally in the mouth, there's something that's missing or that's something not. I don't know the better word for it is not typical. Then, you know, either go into surgery or work around it. Okay? So what I always say is to consult your doctor. Okay? Consult your doctor. Sometimes these surgeries are done by dentists as well. So it depends on where you live and how it is like inside of, of your country. Right? So go get it done. And the reason why I say consult first is because if you start speech therapy before you do the surgery, which is fine, but when you decide to really do it after the surgery, you will have to go through the speech therapy again to learn those sounds. Okay? The reason is because if you get a surgery with your knee or whatever, you will still need to learn how to walk again, learn how to jump and stuff, because it's a different sensation already. It's a different set of, you know, it might have changed the way how your legs look like inside and your muscles and your feelings are different. And don't even talk about the mouth or the tongue. Right. Because it's so much more intricate inside to create a speech sound. So whenever you change something, you can't talk. Just think about you having an ulcer. Right. Just having an ulcer already changes the way you talk already. Yeah. Or you might have a sore throat that already changes how you speak. Not to mention, if you're under medication and you're drowsy, that already changes how you speak as well. So you have to bear in mind that after certain surgeries, you will have to learn again. Okay? Your child will have to learn again. All right. The last one I want to talk about is motor planning disorders. The reason why I put this at the very last is because recently a lot of parents are becoming aware of what a childhood apraxia of speech, or just in general, I just call it apraxia of speech because it. The effects of it go through childhood and go into adulthood as well. So why. Because prevalence rate of apraxia of speech is rather low. So I know it's a good thing that a lot of people are getting to know about this speech disorder, but it doesn't mean that this is actually something that you should be scared or think too much about. Because first of all, it's. Even if you know at a very young age, the. The training is different. Yes. But at the same time, it's very hard to detect. Like, below 3 or even above 3 is pretty hard. I would say around 4 to 5 is easier to detect. Okay. And secondly of all, there's a lot more training that you should be doing at those ages. For instance, keeping up the language development, you know, teaching them a different way of communicating with you. So that's not only just to talk about knowing what disorders right away, because a lot of times a practice speech is suspected by a lot of people, and you need to find someone, a speech therapist who is specialized in that field in order to give you a better answer. All right? Okay. So that's all I wanted to share today. All right. And the last thing I want to give you is a free framework for teaching speech sound disorders. Okay. And this is practically what I learned, what I share with parents a lot, and what works. Okay. And when you sign up with the email, I will go through it with you and tell you how it works. All right? So that's it for this video. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.