Practice Sample Video

If a picture says a thousand words then what does this clip tell you. Notice how the child practices so well looking at the display, the child wants to make the computer light up. Great natural motivator for great practice.

Teaching K to a preschooler age 4

Learning back sounds for a child can be hard, but teaching back sounds can be just as hard when you can't see what the tongue is doing back there, The palatometer display will show you and the child exactly where the tongue contact is.

In this first clip, notice that the child's tongue tip is touching the front and not in the back like it should in the word chicken.

In this second clip, the same child is trying to not touch the front part of his mouth but by saying it too far back. Notice there is no display (dots lighting up) contact because the child is saying the /k/ too far back in the glottal area. This is often a common error on the therapist part to keep this incorrect placement going without realizing it because it's so exciting to get a resembling /k/.

In this third clip, you and the child will see the back contact forming, like it should. It's not perfect yet but it's where it needs to be.

in this fourth clip, you and the child will see the contact for both /k/ words, bike and key.

this is a good facilitative technique to pair words when they have same tongue contact in both words but are in different locations in words; e.g. final vs initial position of words.

Newsworthy Item

Hot off the press, CompleteSpeech is hosting a pilot program for PARENTS to get rental palatometer systems to use at home. This will allow parents to see more progress with their children as they will be able to monitor daily home practice.

This shouldn't take the place of seeing a certified speech therapist as they are the only ones qualified to evaluate your child's speech completely and accurately. They will guide you with what needs to be worked on and how to work through the speech issues.

If you are interested in this home program, leave a comment at https://www.completespeech.com/ they will love to hear your thoughts on this.

new video clips from summer therapy

Client A, age 11, with unknown syndrome (to be determined) has articulation, prosody, multiple syllable and formulating complete sentences issues.

She was a hard worker, had good attention, pleasant, and very stimulable for remediation with visual prompts and displays. She made steady progress each week. She will continue with speech therapy with the palatomer technology but with less intensity during the school year.

This is a good reminder that children with more than just a simple articulation issues will require more time with therapy.

Research has shown that with every layer of concern: cognition, attention, motivation, sensory- hearing, oral defensiveness, severity of the problem, and multiple problems will affect their longterm prognosis. It not to say they won't make progress, they will, parents need to be more patient with the curve of their progress.

Informal gathering of data has been showing that articulation therapy with visual display using the palatometer has allowed almost all the clients to make faster progress (better curve) than traditional therapy in a shorter amount of time. (More research needs to be done of course)

Client A was working on her /r/ words in this clip.