Speech Sound Disorders

Symptoms: 
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• Difficulty making self understood in an unfamiliar context.
• Diminished clarity of speech relative to peers' speech.
• Speech that requires frequent requests for repetition.
• Dependence on gestures to compensate for misunderstood speech.
• Feelings of frustration following failed attempts at communication.
• Sound substitutions, distortions, and/or omissions in speech.

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​Treatment: 
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A speech-language pathologist would teach a child to produce age-appropriate sounds by following a systematic progression from isolated sound production to correct production of the sound in words, sentences, and conversation. For a child with multiple sound errors, sounds are taught in a developmental order with consideration given to ease with which the child can approximate the sound, degree to which the erred sound compromises speech, and whether the error is part of a larger pattern of errors.