What is motor speech therapy?

What is a motor approach and how can that help my child with language?

A motor speech disorder can include  Dysarthria: A disorder of motor execution caused by muscle weakness, paralysis, or poor coordination in the lips, tongue, vocal cords, or diaphragm. Speech often sounds slurred, slow, or difficult to understand.

Apraxia of Speech: A disorder of motor planning where a person knows what they want to say, but the brain struggles to sequence and coordinate the necessary muscle movements. ( I am going to include a separate blog post for this because there is so much to share and experience that goes into a seasoned and great apraxia therapist).

Caregiver training may include simple and functional words to target during therapy and after sessions. Part of the therapy process includes parent coaching.  For example, reading a book with picture flaps and waving “hi and bye” to the animals may include simple words for the child to work on that are also functional.

Therapy should target simple productions of words that are functional. Functional is the key.  The words are broken down into consonants and vowels. Even though some words have 3 letters it may consist of three movements.  Place your hand under your jaw, try keep track of how many times your jaw is dropping. This is similar to counting syllables, but we are looking at jaw movement.

Look below at my motor speech power word resource:

1 Jaw movement

1.    Me

2.    Hi

3.    Bye

4.    Go

5.    Do

6.    No

7.    Yes

8.    Eat

9.    More

10. Pop

2 jaw movements

11. Happy

12. Funny

13. Silly

14. Yummy