What is Misarticulation?
Misarticulation is a speech disorder where the person is having difficulties to utter certain sounds due to some anatomical deformities of active as well as passive articulators (cleft palate, cleft lip, hearing loss, tongue tie, misalignment of teeth etc). A child with Misarticulation disorder may be unable to produce certain sounds and form particular words, said the best speech therapist in Kolkata. For example, they may pronounce “/r/” for “/I/” or “/gh/ “for “/d̪h/”.
The main reason behind the misarticulation problem in children is that they can’t coordinate their articulors ( lips and tongueetc)toproduce words. There are some signs that indicate that your child might be suffering from misarticulation. Let’s know them.
- Your child always substitutes one word with another. For instance, they may pronounce “b”as “d” or “I” as”o.”
- Your child adds unnecessary extra sounds to a specific sound.
- Whenever your child speaks, he/she distorts the sounds in words. For instance, saying “thith” instead of “this”.
How is misarticulation different from Apraxia of speech?
Apraxia of speech is a neurologic speech disorder that reflects an impaired capacity to plan or program sensorimotor commands necessary for directing movements that result in phonetically and prosodically normal speech. It can occur in the absence of physiologic disturbances associated with the dysarthrias and in the absence of disturbance in anycomponent of language. It is a rare disorder and affects 1-2 children out of 1000 children. Some of the common symptoms of Apraxia of Speech are:
- Your child repeats the same word differently
- He may struggle to speak longer words
- You will notice him giving excessive stress while speaking words and phrases.
- He will also have difficulty pronouncing simple words.
Apraxial speech is also a type of articulation disorder. Your child understands how to pronounce the words but struggle to utter the words. As a result, they say the words incorrectly due to poor motor skills.
Both these disorders can be treated with speech therapy.
How Misarticulation and Apraxia of Speech are treated?
It is crucial to identify the symptoms of Misarticulation and Apraxia of Speech early and consult a speech therapist to start your child’s treatment.
You can go for Misarticulation treatment in Kolkata for your child. A speech therapist will suggest various techniques to develop articulatory coordination for speech. The techniques will do the following:
- Strengthen the muscles of the mouth and jaw
- Help in pronouncing the correct words
- Help in speaking difficult words
Similarly, Apraxia of Speech will be diagnosed by speech-language pathologists. They will also suggest various therapies to focus on practicing syllables, words, and phrases as well as to improve planning and programming of motor speech coordination at the time of delivering speech. Moreover, they will also recommend different oromotor exercises to your child.
SLPs also give training to the parents to help your child to practice the exercises with the child at home.
Here is one happy patient sharing his review
“I went there for my cousin’s speech therapy and I was very impressed by their therapy and their efforts. I must say My cousin improved a lot by help of their therapy style and now he is leading a healthy normal lifestyle. I must recommend them for their effective therapy. Thank you so much sir.