Even though it seems like a cute situation for us many times that children say wrong words, this problem can cause the child to suffer from gloom in later ages. Until the age of 7-8, children should say the words in their mother tongue correctly. For speech disorders that continue after these ages, a specialist treatment should be applied. Articulation disorder is in our news with all its aspects…
What is articulation disorder?
Articulation, that is, pronunciation disorder, is a situation in which children are produced incorrectly from speech sounds. (Like the child saying /tedi/ instead of /cat/, /moy/ instead of /mor/). In articulation disorder, the sound that the child cannot produce or produces incorrectly is not included in the vocal repertoire. In order for a speech sound to be produced without errors, the motor movement necessary for that sound production must be performed.
The causes of articulation disorder can be one of the following factors, or it can be caused by incorrect learning without being due to a random structural disorder.
Hearing impairment
Mouth-facial anomalies (such as cleft lip – palate, dental anomalies)
Mental disability
Motor disorders (apraxia/ dysarthria)
Poor imitation ability
Surrounding reinforcement
False learning
Anatomical-physiological deficiencies
Symptoms of articulation disorder
We can explain articulation disorder with 4 main symptoms. These; omission, substitution, addition and distortion.
Skipping: The child says only a few of the letters in the words. For example, to say telezon instead of television.
Substitution: The child replaces the letters in the words with other letters. For example, to say chestnut instead of chestnut.
Addition: Child adds extra letters to words. For example, to say pilyav instead of rice.
Distortion: The child’s words are not exactly the truth, but they are close to the truth. For example, to say eppek instead of bread.
Treatment of articulation disorder
Children learn all sounds in an obvious order, not one-on-one. While sounds such as /b/, /d/, /m/ are learned at 2-3 years of age, some sounds such as /r/, /z/ are learned at later ages. Sometimes the child can make a sound alone or at the beginning of a word correctly, but in other cases it may be wrong. Or he may be having problems with more sounds than you realize.
Help should be sought for speech disorders after the age of 7-8
In general, children can produce all the sounds of their mother tongue when they reach the age of 7-8 years. Speech disorder that continues after this age is unlikely to improve itself. Parents/teachers who think that their child’s speech is different from their peers should definitely seek help from a speech and language therapist. The speech and language therapist determines the cause of the child’s speech problem by making a detailed evaluation.
Treatment started at a young age gives effective results
He/she applies some tests to determine which sounds the child has problems with and informs the family when therapy should be started. Articulation therapy is also performed during adolescence or adulthood. However, therapy done at an early age will give results in a shorter time and more effective before the way of speaking is settled.
