Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Speech Buddies: The closest friend a kiddo with a speech impediment could have!


No one wants to live with a speech impediment.  This is why it is crucial for children with speech impediments to be properly taught at a young age.  However, this task is not simple.  Being a speech therapist will always have its challenges, but with new technology that job may just become slightly easier. Speech Buddies is a revolutionary speech therapy tool that helps children properly position their tongue for five of the most difficult problem sounds- R, S, L, CH, and SH. This revolutionary tool was designed by speech-language pathologists and engineers who truly understand the challenges of these five difficult sounds. Speech buddies help to correct the placement of the child's tongue so that they can properly learn how to create the right sound. For example, the "R" Speech Buddy has a spiraled end that helps the child lift their tongue up and pull it back to produce the R sound. These tools are truly amazing and have been shown to correct speech problems twice as fast. Speech Buddies are also FDA approved and are produced in California.
Examples of each Speech Buddies Tool
Change effects people in different ways; and change is usually hard.  However, making the change to incorporate Speech Buddies into a speech therapists method of therapy will be the best decision they have made yet!  This innovative product has been proven to help improve a kiddo’s ability to say the five difficult problem sounds.  Patients from the age of four and up can be treated with Speech Buddies as well as patients with many different types of disorders.  The disorders that a speech therapist should consider treating patients with Speech Buddies include speech and articulation disorders of all severities such as patient’s on the autism spectrum, kiddo’s with childhood apraxia of speech, patient’s with acquired apraxia of speech from stroke or traumatic brain injury, and patient’s that have accent modification where English sounds are misarticulated.  Speech therapists should know that Speech Buddies are not however recommended for language disorders, stuttering, or voice disorders.  Research is also still being evaluated for speech and articulation disorders that have neuromuscular weakness, cerebral palsy, paralysis and Down syndrome, and craniofacial abnormalities.  With all this in mind, this tool still makes a speech therapists job a little easier when finding a method of therapy that works and has accurate results!

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