Speech and language therapy provides support and care for children and adults who have difficulties in communication or with eating, drinking and swallowing.
Speech is one of the main ways in which we communicate with those around us. It develops naturally, along with other signs of normal growth and development.
- Disfluency is disorders in which a person repeats a sound, word or phrase. Stuttering may be most serious disfluency.
- Articulation disorder may have no clear cause. Problems or changes in the structure of shape of muscle and bones used to make speech sound .These changes may include cleft palate and tooth problem.
- Cerebral plasy-Damage to parts of brain or the nerves that control how the muscle work together to create speech.
- Voice disorders are caused by problems when air passes from the lungs, through vocal cords, and then through the throat, nose mouth and lips.
Disfluency (stuttering is the most common type of disfluency):
- Repetition of sounds, words, or parts of words or phrases after age 4 (I want…I want my car. I…I see you.)
- Putting in (interjecting) extra sounds or words (We went to the…uh…store.)
- Making words longer (I am Raaaaaahul.)
- Pausing during a sentence or words, often with the lips together
- Tension in the voice or sounds
- Frustration with attempts to communicate
- Head jerking while talking
- Eye blinking while talking
- Embarrassment with speech
Articulation disorder:
- Sounds may be distorted (changed)
- Sounds (most often consonants) will be substituted, left off, added, or changed
- Errors may make it hard for people to understand the person (only family members may be able to understand a child)
Voice disorders:
- Hoarseness or rapines to the voice
- Voice may break in or out
- Pitch of the voice may change suddenly
- Voice may be too loud or too soft
- Person may run out of air during a sentence
- Speech may sound odd because too much air is escaping through the hose (hyper nasality) or too little air is coming out through the nose. (hypo nasality)
Intellectual disability and hearing loss make children more likely to develop speech disorders. At-risk infants should be referred to an audiologist for an audiology exam. Audiological and speech therapy can then be started, if necessary.
As young children begin to speak, some disfluency is common. Children lack a large vocabulary and have difficulty expressing them. This results in broken speech. If you place excessive attention on the disfluency, a stuttering pattern may develop. The best way to prevent stuttering, therefore, is to avoid paying too much attention to the disfluency.
Speech therapy may help with more severe symptoms or speech problems that do not improve.
In therapy, the child will learn how to create certain sounds.
- Important test require after birth after 24 Hour. Hearing screening is compulsory.
- After Hearing screening result shows in the form of pass or refer. If comes refer then only have go for further test. Second month again do the same test if it comes again refer then have to go for BERA Test. If the BERA is normal then no need to go for the hearing treatment. If comes abnormal depending upon the hearing loss child has to fit the hearing aid and immediately speech therapy stimulation which will help to develop language.
- Eye contact and visual preference for faces. Differentiated crying – has different cries for different needs. Shows preference for mother’s voice
- 7 to 9 weeks First vocalizations of vowel-like sounds
- 9-11 months Imitates tongue clicks and kisses. Babbles two syllables (da-da, mi-mi) Understands and carries out simple commands.
- 12-15 months uses one or two common words meaningfully. Understands key words in familiar situations
- 18-21 months Uses 6-20 recognizable words. Points to own nose, eye, mouth, and hair.
- 21-24 month understands simple explanations, like: “first eat your food, and then you can have some juice.’” Start using two-word sentences, like: “Daddy bye-bye.”
- In new born babies from birth your baby play close attention to sound.
- 3 Months your baby hears your voice he or she may look directly at you.
- 12 Months child will recognize favorite song. He or She may even try to join in.
Hearing loss is a a impairment where reduce the hearing ability like normal. It happens due to ear infection, the ear structure not developed completely, aging, exposing to loud sound, head trauma, heredity, injury, complication at birth, toxic medicine.
Hearing loss can occur anywhere in the auditory system. There are major three types.
Conductive Loss:- Hearing loss in outer or middle ear
Sensory neural loss:- Hearing loss in the inner ear called “cochlear “ or Sensory neural
Mixed Loss:- A person with both conductive and sensor neural hearing loss combined, it said to have “mixed loss .”Another type of hearing loss is linked with the central auditory nervous system, which includes the auditory nerve, the brainstem and the brain.
A person is said to have conductive hearing loss if sound is prevented from moving from the external ear through the middle ear to the cochlea or if excessive ear wax or foreign objects are placed in the ear canal or if fluid gets accumulated in the middle ear or if damage is caused to the eardrum or middle ear mechanism. Person suffering from these type of losses can often be treated by medical and/or surgical treatment .It can become permanent and pose a serious health threat without medical treatment. Sensor neural hearing loss is due to problems in the inner ear and/or neural network. While the outer and middle ear conduct vibrations to the inner ear, some of the sensory hair cells within the cochlea are damaged and fail to pick up the complete nature of the sound. Sensor neural loss can be caused by aging, extended exposure to loud noise, use of toxic drugs and certain diseases. Due to the irreversibility of this kind of hearing loss hearing aids are the most common form of treatment.
If you experience a number of warning sign or your surrounded people tell you are not hearing properly immediately check up your ear a certified professional. Audiologist can do the Audiometry Test. He or She should be BASLP or MASLP.
Audiologist will first ask you about your lifestyle and your hearing need. You will then are given comprehensive hearing screening and suggest hearing aid. After that he gives you different hearing aid free trial for choosing right hearing aid as per your convenience. Sometimes he arranges free trial at your home for right suitability.
Digital hearing aids convert sound received by the hearing aid’s microphone from an analog to a digital signal. This allows the hearing instrument to produce the exact requirements for a particular hearing loss; always keeping the loudness at a comfortable level. It also allows for advanced noise reduction features that distinguish between speech and non-speech signals, and automatically decrease loudness of those non-speech signals, if needed.
Analog hearing aids, by contrast, are unable to automatically adjust for different loudness requirements outside of increasing or decreasing the volume control. As a result, many analog users complain of having to constantly adjust their volume controls in order to hear speech adequately in different environments.