Fluidity of speech, volume of voice for rising high school

[Anonymous]

My daughter graduated out of speech years ago and is now a rising 9th grader. She is very verbal and talkative (although shy) but her dramatic style of speech and sometimes halting manner of speech interrupt otherwise funny, interesting comments. Is there a way to work on this? I feel like I'm constantly giving her social pointers (with very little success) so I don't want to start pointing out things she could work on speech wise unless there are really techniques that help with this.... any ideas?

[Anonymous]

Speech therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Speech therapy.

Like I said, she had speech therapy for years. Is there a technique besides one on one with a speech therapist to address this?

[Anonymous]

Find a social skills group.

[Anonymous]

has she ever seen herself speaking? video her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:has she ever seen herself speaking? video her.

This is effective and would be part of what an SLP would do.

However, given your daughters age, she has to want to work on this stuff. Your “pointing things out” (if he isn’t asking for feedback) is probably not helpful. Would you criticize her appearance or weight?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter graduated out of speech years ago and is now a rising 9th grader. She is very verbal and talkative (although shy) but her dramatic style of speech and sometimes halting manner of speech interrupt otherwise funny, interesting comments. Is there a way to work on this? I feel like I'm constantly giving her social pointers (with very little success) so I don't want to start pointing out things she could work on speech wise unless there are really techniques that help with this.... any ideas?

What kind of speech therapy did she have? My DD was diagnosed with atypical disfluency, which is basically a mid-sentence stutter that impacts the fluency of her speech. If you did not have a speech therapist specializing in stuttering, then it might be worth it to try a new one if she does have disfluency -- we were in speech therapy for 2 years for articulation, but then switched to a new therapist once we realized she was having trouble getting her sentences out smoothly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:has she ever seen herself speaking? video her.

Great idea

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:has she ever seen herself speaking? video her.

This is effective and would be part of what an SLP would do.

However, given your daughters age, she has to want to work on this stuff. Your “pointing things out” (if he isn’t asking for feedback) is probably not helpful. Would you criticize her appearance or weight?

Like I said, I don't want to point things out, thus my question about whether there was a way to address this in a productive way. Similarly, if she were eating herself into an unhealthy situation, I would look for a way to guide her to health, not criticize her weight. But thanks as always for unhelpful snark.

[Anonymous]

Put her in a beginning drama camp. Then find an acting coach. I don't think many speech therapists would have any idea of how to work with her.

[Anonymous]

I think you should interview speech therapists who work with teens around halting speech. There are many types of speech "issues" and different ways to working with them. Articulation can be the only problem, or not using enough breath (causing low tone of voice), or stuttering or.... there are probably 10 other things a real speech therapist could articulate and different types of therapy are used for each speech challenge.

So I wouldn't assume that "all speech therapy is the same" or even "no speech therapists would know how to work with her"

How about if you ASK your daughter if she notices she speaks differently, and if she wants to work on it? Then you are on her team and you will work together to find ways to solve this.

Honestly, I'm not sure if she were videotaped she would know how to solve the problems. She might see that the speaks in a halting manner, but the question is, how does she solve that? THAT's what an SLP should be able to answer. I mean, SLPs work with kids, teens, adults, people who've had traumatic brain injuries, strokes, after someone has had oral surgery, etc. I bet there are things an SLP would suggest, we just don't know them.

[Anonymous]

OP - there are apps designed to help with prosody, which sounds like part of your daughter's issues. Google them and also techniques for improving prosody for SLPs.

But I agree that an SLP is the way to go and that the kind of therapy your daughter did before was likely focused on different goals.

[Anonymous]

National Speech has a stuttering clinic that has a SLP who works with disfluencies and stuttering. We saw the head of it and she was fantastic.

[Anonymous]

You really need an evaluation. If possible, take some recording so the SLP with have multiple exemplars. This sounds like an atypical dysfluency, however, there are other possibilities to explore. You absolutely need a professional opinion on this. Don't waste time trying things on your own that may, in fact, not target the source of the issue at all.