Upper East Side Oral Motor Therapy: Improve Your Child’s Speech Clarity

• Articulation
  Stephanie speaks about Josh, age 7, who has trouble saying the sounds R and S.

You may understand everything your child says, but does your neighbor in the elevator? If your child is frustrated when peers have trouble understanding what’s being said, a consultation with Stephanie for an oral motor assessment may be beneficial.

What Is Oral Motor Therapy?

An articulation assessment examines which sounds your child has difficulty producing. An oral motor evaluation determines WHY your child has difficulty saying specific sounds.

Oral motor exercises develop awareness, strength, placement, coordination, and mobility of the jaw, lips, and tongue. Oral motor therapy typically increases a child’s speech clarity in conversation rather than simply at the word level.

How Oral Motor Therapy Works

At first, a child may not have the oral motor strength to say a specific sound. Strengthening the muscles needed to say target sounds and teaching the feeling of where to place the jaw, lips, and tongue may result in accurate speech sounds. Sometimes traditional speech therapy is necessary following oral motor therapy. 

Oral motor exercises can often be completed at mealtime because we use the same muscles for eating and speech. For example, when drinking from an open cup, a child should use both lips to take a sip and not place their teeth onto the cup. A traditional sippy cup won’t allow lip closure, and drinking from a straw while biting won’t allow lip rounding or optimal tongue retraction – all necessary for speech clarity. 

Parents and caregivers play an active role in oral motor therapy, as the exercises must be completed for a few minutes, 3-5x/week. 

Benefits of Oral Motor Therapy

When done correctly, oral motor therapy can improve the strength and stability of the jaw, lips, and tongue to improve speech clarity. It can be used from the start of speech therapy, but it’s also great for children struggling when a traditional approach to articulation therapy is not enough. 

Oral motor therapy may help resolve issues with articulation, open mouth posture, drooling, thumbsucking, and pacifier use. 

Stephanie’s Approach to Oral Motor Therapy

Stephanie provides oral motor therapy for children in their Upper East Side homes using fun and motivating hierarchical exercises.

She reviews individualized exercises with parents at the evaluation and each therapy session so the exercises can accurately be practiced for homework. Detailed written instructions are consistently provided. Parents are encouraged to email with questions about the homework between sessions to maximize skills.

Stephanie formally began studying oral motor therapy through Talktools™ in 2001 and was selected to study under Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson, an innovative leader in oral motor therapy, in 2006. Stephanie combines Talktools™ methods with what she has learned from her students and expert clinicians such as Pam Marshalla, Charlotte Boshart, Robyn Merkel-Walsh, and Debra Beckman. 

Contact Stephanie for Speech Therapy Services in NYC

If a traditional articulation therapy approach is not yielding the desired results in your child’s speech clarity, consider a tailored oral motor exercise program expertly designed by Stephanie to strengthen your child’s jaw, lips, and tongue.