Hi Icommunicate team,

I am a speech pathologist in the States and I have a boy with a very strange speech problem. He makes the /s/ sound nasally - it comes out of his nose, not his mouth. He is 14 and I am finding it very difficult to fix. Have you guys got any ideas?

Thanks Veronica

Hi Veronica,

Yes, that is a difficult one. I had a boy in therapy who did the exact same thing. We managed to fix it, but it took time.

First of all try and get him to listen for the difference between the 2 sounds (nasal /s/ and oral /s/). So he can here a clear difference. Try and say some words using the nasal /s/ and vocal /s/ and see if he can hear which sound is articulated correctly.

Then look at his awareness of oral and nasal airflow (for instance, blowing through a straw for oral, and steaming up a mirror under his nose for nasal.

Then work on just producing the /s/ in isolation. This may take some time. I draw a snake and get the child to run their finger along it as they slowly produce an /s/. If this is difficult, try producing lots of /t/ sounds close together, stretching them out until they sound like little hiss sounds.

Once you have the /s/ sound just concentrate on producing that in isolation for a while. Then try to link the /s/ with a vowel sound, again this may take time to achieve. If you can master this try some CVC words. Maybe use nonsense words to start with as he will not have a pre-set motor program for these.

I hope that helps Veronica. Let me know how it goes and if you have any other questions.

Regards Johan