If your child has trouble with speech, you may be worried about how it could affect their social life.
My name is Jessica Abawag, and I’m a speech-language pathologist and owner of Fluens Children’s Therapy with locations in Tacoma, Washington, and Columbia, Tennessee. Our clinic provides speech therapy for kids aged 18 months to 18 years, and we specialize in the toddler preschool age range.
Today we’re going to talk about how a speech disorder may or may not affect your child socially.
Many Parents Worry Their Child Will Struggle Socially if They Have a Speech Sound Disorder
Many parents that come to our clinic will ask us if having a speech sound disorder or a language delay or even stuttering will affect their child socially. That’s a totally understandable question, especially as kids get older and interact with peers, and especially if they’re coming in to see us and they’re a little older themselves.
The answer is that it really depends. I’ve worked with kids who were totally unaffected by their speech sound disorder. A lot of people couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they compensated for that by using gestures. Sometimes kids drew pictures, and they had the type of personality that they weren’t visibly affected by how others perceive them socially with their speech sound disorder.
Other kids were on the complete opposite end of the spectrum where their speech sound disorder or language delay really did affect them socially.
How to Help Your Child with a Speech Sound Disorder at Home
What we talk with parents about is to find a balance, especially when it comes to things like stuttering or articulation in the sense that other people can’t understand what they’re saying, but the kids already know what they’re trying to express. We try to find a balance between not overcorrecting.
Especially as they start getting into therapy, parents get really excited, which is great, and they want to practice at home, which we totally encourage. But we tell parents not to overcorrect all throughout the day, but to find the specific times of the day that kids can expect that they’re going to be working on their speech sounds or whatnot, whether it’s during bath time or dinner time, or maybe school time if they’re homeschooled.
And that allows kids to not have to inhibit their thoughts or their emotions or what they’re trying to express by worrying too much about how others will perceive them socially. Instead, they have a predictable time of when they’re going to practice those speech sounds.
Speech Therapy Can Help with Speech, Language, and Social Skills
We also want to find a balance between kids not getting too frustrated when it comes to their language delay or speech sound disorder, or even stuttering. What we will often do is offer alternative ways for kids to communicate, and we’ll discuss that with the parents.
If they’re not speaking words or not speaking words very clearly, maybe they use an AAC device, maybe they use pictures. Maybe there’s a simpler word they can use to express that. Maybe they use a lot of gestures, maybe they use some simple sign language. We try to balance that social aspect of getting really frustrated with finding a bridge or another tool that kids can use to help communicate with others without getting so frustrated.
We Teach Kids Self-Advocacy Tools
And then when the kids are older and they’re getting into school or even teenagers, we have those types of conversations about how they can advocate for themselves when it comes to communicating with others so that those social interactions can still be maintained. One example is asking people for more time. If somebody asks a question and they need more time to process or think about what’s being asked or even to formulate their ideas, we teach kids to ask, “Can I have more time?” or, “Can you say that again?”
Those self-advocacy tips are all great ways for us to support social development and those social interactions as they’re learning to communicate more clearly with others in speech therapy. The tools and the strategies of the treatment that our therapists use can all help support those social skills while kids are learning to communicate more clearly.
Reach Out to Fluens Children’s Therapy for An Assessment
If your kid is struggling with formulating sounds correctly, putting sentences together, or they’re stuttering, don’t hesitate to reach out for help. We’d be happy to see if an assessment will show that support services are needed.
Feel free to give us a call, and we look forward to hearing from you.