Oral Motor Disorders
An Oral-Motor Disorder is an inability to use the oral mechanism for functional speech or feeding, including chewing, blowing, or making specific sounds.
Oral-motor disorders are diagnosed by the SLP directly observing the child, doing what is called an "Oral-Motor Exam". In this exam, the therapist asks the child to do a variety of tasks (such as pursing lips, blowing, elevating tongue, etc), looks inside the child's mouth, observes the child eating and listens to the child talk. The therapist will also listen for the child's ability to produce rapid oral movements. The SLP will determine how "intelligible" the child is (how much of what the child says can other people understand?), and may complete a formal speech test.
Some children with oral-motor disorders are considered to be orally hyper-sensitive or to have tactile defensiveness. These children tend to have very rigid lips, and appear to be tight around their mouths. They may hate having their teeth brushed, dislike many foods, and get upset when their mouths are touched. Other children are hypo-sensitive. These children may drool, because they have weak lip muscles. They may also stuff food in their mouths until they gag or choke; these kids don't have normal sensation in their mouths and it takes a lot of food before they realize their mouth is full. These type of children need to develop more normal sensitivity. A SLP can work with these children, using a variety of exercises designed to normalize sensitivity. These can include deep touch (for the hypo-sensitive child), chewing exercises, blowing a variety of whistles, working with straws, and more. Talk Tools Oral Motor Program developed by Sarah Rosenfeld- Johnson, is one of the methods used at PediaSpeech Services. If these children have multiple speech production errors, the SLP includes oral-motor exercises in every therapy session, and match the oral-motor exercise to the sound being targeted. For example, if the child has weak lip closure (tapping on the upper lip, drinking from a straw, blowing a whistle), then immediately working on words starting with [p],[b],or [m]. This way the exercise directly relates to the speech sound.
The most important thing to remember about speech production disorders is that therapy can, in most cases, make a huge difference. The earlier and more intensive the intervention, the more successful the therapy.
Signs and Symptoms