Karaoke!
Isn’t karaoke the best? No matter what happens, it’s always fun. Wincing inside but clapping wholeheartedly for the people who just don’t have it. Watching in fascination when someone truly talented sings, someone who may even sound better than the original singer!
And then it’s your turn. You try to get out of it, but everyone eggs you on until you have no choice. Nervously you choose your song and tell the deejay. You grab the mike, stare at the screen, and now it’s the moment of truth: do you come in at the perfect time? Do you start slow and continue to drag behind? Are you singing so fast you sound like an auctioneer? Can you sing the melody, but no one understands what you’re saying? Or are you following the words as they change color, at just the right tempo, all while carrying a tune?
The pitfalls of karaoke are not unlike the speech issues that children wrestle with. Many have problems with pacing, speaking too slow or too fast. Some can’t be understood when they speak. Fortunately, just as karaoke singers have that screen with the lyrics that change color to help them, children have a different kind of screen they can rely on: the pacing board.
The pacing board
Many speech therapists love using pacing boards and for good reason. They can help treat a variety of issues. To name just a few:
- Fast rate of speech
- Cluttering/fluency
- Language disorders
- Apraxia
- Dysarthria
Making a pacing board
The best part about a pacing board is that you already have what it takes to make one: a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. Place that piece of paper lengthwise, and make five evenly spaced dots in the middle, whatever size you like (the size of a quarter is a good starting point). That’s it. You’ve made yourself a basic pacing board. That’s the bare minimum.
But if you want something that’s durable, laminating it would be a good idea. You can use construction paper instead of regular paper. You can use different colored markers. In place of simple dots you can use emojis, or stars, animals…really, whatever you think will best hold your child’s attention. Do a Pinterest or Google search and you will easily come up with dozens of different ideas.
How to use a pacing board
Children respond well to visual aids, and that’s part of the success of a pacing board. Say you have a three word sentence you want to practice with your kiddo: “I eat pizza.” He has a fast rate of speech, so even though he has no problem when he says those words separately, when he puts them together it becomes an unintelligible blur.
Point to the first dot as you say “I,” and then have him say “I.” Same thing with “eat.” Same again for “pizza.” You can do this as many times as you like, until he’s comfortable just using a pacing board. Perhaps the next time (or whenever you feel he’s ready), you say “I eat pizza,” and then he tackles the entire sentence by himself, only saying a word when you point to a dot. With time, hopefully, the use of a pacing board will help him say “I eat pizza,” and other people will understand what he’s saying perfectly.
Now let’s say you want to practice a sentence with your older child, a sentence that has eight or nine words. When you run out of dots, simply go back to the first dot until you have covered the entire sentence.
Of course, there are other things you can accomplish with a pacing board:
- Syllable breakdowns
- Practice medial or final consonants
- Better speech fluency
- Practice slower rate of speech
Cheap but incredibly versatile, a pacing board is a wonder. But what really makes a pacing board work is the patience and the trust between the people using it. And where can you find more patience than a mother for her child, or more trust than a child for his mother? Now that’s true music to the ears!