Struggling with your ‘s’ sounds? You’re not alone – 23% of people have their speech affected by lisping at some point in their life. However, most of us grow out of it – with the maj Ithaca College online SLP programority of us ceasing to lisp beyond the age of 5 years old.
If you find yourself still lisping after the age of 5, you might consider consulting a locally-based speech-language pathologist – one who has completed an accreditation that is recognized in the US, like the Ithaca College online SLP program, for example. As part of your treatment, your speech-language pathologist is likely to teach you some tips and tricks to help fix your lisp. Here are just some of them.
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Tip # 1: Identify the Speech Impediment
In your first sessions with your speech-language pathologist, they will begin by analyzing your speech. This will help them to identify where the issues lie, and what techniques will be needed to correct your lisp. It will also help them ascertain which words and phrases are most challenging for you to pronounce so that they can help correct your speech.
As well as this, your speech-language pathologist will often demonstrate proper and improper pronunciation of words and ask you to listen to the differences between each utterance. This technique helps the patient understand how words should be properly pronounced. This technique is particularly effective for young children who may not be aware they are pronouncing words incorrectly.
Tip # 2: Switch Up Your Tongue Placement
Most often, a lisping speech impediment is caused by incorrect tongue placement, as well as the engagement of incorrect muscles in the mouth and face. As such, a speech-language pathologist will tend to correct their patient’s tongue placement as the first port of call.
The necessary corrections to the patient’s tongue placement will relate predominantly to the type of lisp the patient is experiencing. In the case of a frontal lisp, for instance, the patient will often be pushing their tongue out too far forward in the mouth, distorting the ‘s’ sound when speaking. If a patient has a dental lisp, their tongue will stay behind their teeth without protruding at all, resulting in a muffled ‘s’ sound. For patients with a palatal lisp, the middle of the tongue will block air from reaching the palate, which also distorts the ‘s’ sound.
There are many different techniques a speech-language pathologist will draw upon to correct their patient’s tongue placement. Perhaps one of the most surprising? Drinking through a straw can help correct tongue placement by increasing awareness of where the tongue is sitting in the mouth, and also, helping make tongue retraction feel more natural.
Tip # 3: Practice Challenging ‘S’ Words
As with most things, in the case of lisp recovery, practice makes perfect. A speech-language pathologist will often ask their patient to practice pronouncing challenging words correctly until they get the correct pronunciation down-pat. Some of the most challenging ‘s’ words for a lisper to pronounce? These can be broken down into three levels of difficulty:
Initial
Some of the lead-in ‘s’ words for a lisper to practice include ‘sit’, ‘sink’, ‘soup’, ‘son’, ‘sand’, and ‘sock’.
Medial
Slightly more challenging ‘s’ sounds? Think words like ‘messy’, ‘baseball’, or ‘outside’.
Final
The most challenging ‘s’ words for a lisper to pronounce include examples like ‘bus’, ‘toss’, ‘pass’, and ‘grass’.
Often, lispers will also find ‘z’ sounds challenging. Some of the most difficult words to pronounce with the ‘z’ sound include:
Initial
These include lead-in words like ‘zoo’, ‘zip’, ‘zoom’, and ‘zero’.
Medial
Medial sounds include more challenging words such as ‘puzzle’, ‘lazy’, or ‘freezer’.
Final
Finally, lispers can often struggle the most with ‘z’ words such as ‘sneeze’, ‘hose’, ‘rose’, and ‘fizz’.
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If you’re one of the 23% of people who struggle with lisping, don’t worry, there’s help at hand. Going to see a speech-language pathologist is a surefire way to get rid of your lisp – as long as you put the tips and tricks they teach you into practice, of course.
The good news? By identifying switching up your tongue placement, and practicing challenging ‘s’ and ‘z’ words, you can be well on your way to correcting your lisp.