Hi,

I am a physical therapist working in Early Intervention in NJ. I have a 12 month child that I suspect has an undiagnosed syndrome. She has very low muscle throughout. Her cognitive level is about 6 months. She cannot sit unsupported. She can imitate a play action. She is making very few sounds. Frequently sticks out her tongue, open mouth posture. She can only eat pureed foods. I called for a speech assessment and was told by the Speech Therapist that there is no evidence that Oral Motor Therapy can help her speech at this age. Is that true?

Thank you for your help!

Tal

Dear Tal, 

Thank you for your question.  My name is Monica Purdy and I am a speech and language pathologist that also specializes in oral placement therapy and feeding. There is a lot of research on oral motor and the effectiveness and evidenced based information. If you visit this page on the TalkTools website you will find articles that you can print off and give to the speech therapist. Many speech therapists assume when someone mentions “oral motor” that they are referring to exercises such as “tongue wagging” (moving the tongue from side to side outside of the mouth), puffing the cheeks, and/or elevating the tongue to the nose or chin (again outside of the mouth). These activities do not have any support and are not related to speech or feeding and should not be used. However as you know being a physical therapist you can address muscle function by working on stability, dissociation, grading, precision and endurance in order to help a client with feeding and speech intelligibility. At TalkTools we do this by using kinesthetic feedback or tactile cues to help a client achieve these skills. Many times we work on feeding because it is a precursor to speech and we can prevent speech sound distortions from occurring if we address the muscles in feeding.   

I hope this helps, if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me. 

Monica Purdy, M.A., CCC-SLP