Artificially hiding a lisp

Hi Sandra. 

I have to say that it seems that on a weekly basis, I have a  conversation with another parent about their child who has a “tongue thrust”! 

Re: the child that I evaluated…..After carefully looking into his errors, I realized that this 10 year old had a combination of an interdental lisp and an upper dentalized lisp, that I was initially perceiving as a lateral lisp bc there was some lateral airflow based on his broad tongue configuration.  Does that make sense to you????   I am questioning this for some reason!

Joanne

Hi Joanne,

 I think the bottom line is that most kids with any type of lisp started out interdentally.  Through the years of correction by parents or therapists or self-correction, they each develop a unique way to try to “cover” the original lisp, ending up with a variety of “lisp types” and the possible way that air is released during production, the preferred tongue positions taken, etc. are merely a matter of what worked most easily or what they were taught to do to artificially “hide” a lisp.

Thus, we come back to the necessity of maximizing their lingual control and excursions/shaping;  You can’t work on tongue position until prof exam #1 is mastered; then you address the position of the tongue, lips and mandible; and only thereafter should artic be undertaken since it is then a “fair” request to place tongue where it should be, etc.

I hope this helps…

Sandra