A frontal lisp is a stereotypical error many people associate with needing to see a speech pathologist. That doesn’t mean this is easy to treat! Sometimes, our usual strategies don’t seem to work for this common, and sometimes stubborn speech error where the tongue pokes out and it sounds like the child is substituting “th” for “s”.
As I always say, no one tip will work for every child, but here are 3 tips that might support you in eliciting correct placement for a clear /s/ sound:
Use helpful visual cues
Use a visual cue! You can show the child by contrasting the “new” /s/ and how they are currently saying it by using my FREE visuals to support your spoken cues. You could say something like, “I think I saw your tongue poke out for that one (and touch the cue card that shows that)... Remember to keep your teeth gently touching at the front/try not to show me that tongue (and point to the more accurate /s/ cue card)”.
These visual cue cards can support the child’s understanding when you draw attention to what different parts of their mouth are doing and how that can change the sound.
Use Facilitative Contexts
Have you ever observed that your child can can some of their /s/ sounds really clearly in some words, but not others? Or r perhaps you are looking for a starting place in therapy and don’t want to include words that exacerbate the students tongue coming forward?
Use words that facilitate the best chance of a clear /s/ production! These are words with /s/ in different positions and vowel contexts that help the child to keep their tongue braced and lifted. Some of our favourite facilitative contexts to try contain /t/ and /s/ combination in different positions. These include:
- Words ending it /ts/
- Words staring with /st/
- Words ending in /st/
If you’ve never heard of facilitative contexts before, check out a more detailed blog on facilitating /s/ HERE.
Reframe their lisp with a metaphor
Try using a metaphor cue to help teach the child a “new sound” so they can understand what you are asking them to do! As you might have experienced, some children can get “stuck” in a habit or pattern of saying their sound with the tongue coming forward.
Sometimes it’s best to start off teaching them a “new sound” by “tricking the child into believing that his new target is something other than the error sound.” (Shine, pg. 175 in Secord et al. 2007).
Our favorite explanation is called the “train slowing down sound”. It not only provides a topic that many younger children enjoy (trains), but you can use real toy trains from your therapy room as part of the teaching process. Watch our YouTube clip to better understand how you can use this metaphor in your therapy session.
