The Power of the /S/! (A Speech Post)

So today I had a breakthrough moment with one of my articulation kiddos. It. was. awesome!!

I know most of you veteran SLP's out there probably think that articulation is the easiest area of speech, but for me, the easiest area is language, and I attribute that to my being an English major and teacher/tutor. To me, vocabulary, parts of speech, basic concepts, etc. are all fun and easy to plan creatively for my kids. I do not, of course, have a caseload of language kids, but do have quite a few artic kids. This is great, considering I need a wide variety of experience for when I'm no longer an assistant, but actually doing this stuff on my own, making my own decisions.

One of my kids struggles with making his /S/ sound. Of course he does "th" instead, but for about 8 weeks, I have never been able to help him understand tongue placement, or hear the difference between /s/ and /th/. I was getting discouraged because I heard many people say /S/ is their favorite sound to work with because it is so easy. I've tried using tongue depressors, the "big mouth" as a model, minimal pairs, etc. Well, my supervisor told me that she sometimes had luck when she explained that some people have a false tooth and their S kind of sounds like a loud whistle. Well, I modeled this and it was a huge success! He even heard himself say the /s/ clearly and wanted to look in the mirror so he could make sure his tongue wasn't touching in between his front teeth. He kept wanting to say /s/ words and got them all right multiple times!

Now, this may not be too exciting to many, but it was one of those moments when you know the kid "got it" and it was literally life changing for them. The big smile I got to see when he heard himself say the /S/ sound was the best part of my day. Absolutely priceless :-) I can't wait to see it again!