A short discussion (transcript excerpt) featuring Hallie Bulkin about integrating myofunctional therapy (myo) with traditional speech therapy for children. Bulkin emphasizes that correcting articulation is easier when oral musculature and structures function properly, recommends sometimes starting speech work alongside or after myofunctional treatment depending on family motivation, and highlights the importance of parent education and meeting families where they are.
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It's not just one thing. We're a complex human of different varying levels of function and dysfunction.
Yeah, well, yeah, we get parents who are like, they come in because the kid is, you know, having a hard time saying certain sounds, right? So they're focused on the articulation and we're like, it will be a lot easier to address the articulation when all of the muscles and, you know, structures are doing what they're supposed to be doing. So it's getting their buy in, right? It's like getting them. Because. And honestly, sometimes I'm like, with. With certain families and like, we just. We just got to start with the speech. Like, we'll start with it alongside the myo. I'd love to get partway through the mile program and then introduce the sounds because then I know the tongue is going to be in the right position or we'll be able to train it and teach it to be in the right position, like, versus, like, undoing the compensations that they're going to be using if we start with it out the gate. I'm like, but sometimes it's just meeting the families where they're at and, like, their motivation level, right? And like, if that's the chief complaint and you're going to lose them altogether because they're just like, I, this is not what I signed up for. Right? It's like, we have to totally meet them where they're at. And the education piece, I think, is huge.
