RE: monotone voice???

[Guest guest]

My son is 2.6 years old and sounds this same way and is also very hoarse

and breathy.

Angi

[ ] monotone voice???

Hi everyone,

I have been a member of this list for a long time, but rarely post. I

read

the daily digest everyday though.

My son is 3.3 years old and is Apraxic. He began speaking at age 2.6

years

of age. We do use ProEfa and other interventions.

But my question is related to voice quality/sound. He has quite a large

vocabulary now and is doing marvelously, but when he speaks it is pretty

monotone, he sounds like his speech has been " taught " (which it has),

and

not very natural. Is this common with Apraxic kids? Does anyone out

there

have any advice for us or our speech pathologist to help him develop

more

" natural " sounding speech with more intonations, inflections, etc.??

Thanks for any advice.

[Guest guest]

My daughter just turned 5 and there was a span of about 2 weeks not long ago

that we noticed that her laugh would change almost on a daily basis. The ST

also noticed it and said that what she was doing was testing what she could

make her voice do and that this was very good. She commented that a lot of

Apraxic children do talk monotone. I don't know what to tell you in terms

of helping your ST, except that my daughter just turned 5, so give you child

time and perhaps he too will begin experimenting.

Hope this helps,

>Hi everyone,

>I have been a member of this list for a long time, but rarely post. I read

>the daily digest everyday though.

>My son is 3.3 years old and is Apraxic. He began speaking at age 2.6 years

>of age. We do use ProEfa and other interventions.

>But my question is related to voice quality/sound. He has quite a large

>vocabulary now and is doing marvelously, but when he speaks it is pretty

>monotone, he sounds like his speech has been " taught " (which it has), and

>not very natural. Is this common with Apraxic kids? Does anyone out there

>have any advice for us or our speech pathologist to help him develop more

> " natural " sounding speech with more intonations, inflections, etc.??

>Thanks for any advice.

>

[Guest guest]

My son Riley is now 6, and spoke no words at age 3. He can say

almost anything now with or without prompting but he spoke in a

monotone until recently, I am really just noticing it now, his

sentences are beginning to have some nice inflection in them. Not

perfect, but he's getting there. I think they do just need the

confidence and practice. I thought that might provide you with a

little hope for yours.

--- In @y..., " Randall Cary " <RANDALLWADE@p...>

wrote:

> Hi everyone,

> I have been a member of this list for a long time, but rarely post.

I read

> the daily digest everyday though.

> My son is 3.3 years old and is Apraxic. He began speaking at age

2.6 years

> of age. We do use ProEfa and other interventions.

> But my question is related to voice quality/sound. He has quite a

large

> vocabulary now and is doing marvelously, but when he speaks it is

pretty

> monotone, he sounds like his speech has been " taught " (which it

has), and

> not very natural. Is this common with Apraxic kids? Does anyone out

there

> have any advice for us or our speech pathologist to help him

develop more

> " natural " sounding speech with more intonations, inflections, etc.??

> Thanks for any advice.

>

[Guest guest]

Hi Riley's mom! Your message gives lots of hope to many of us. Could you tell

me when your son started to say words and how the speech progressed? Also,

what do you think helped the most with speech progression and receptive

issues (if that was an issue). thanks and congratulations on the great

success! Carolyn

[Guest guest]

Hi my sons' speech teacher has requested that we purchase ( as well as she)

a metronome. This is an instrument used to keep beat with musician while

playing their instruments. This teaches the apraxic child to have a

beat/rythmn to their speech. You start slow and increase gradually

eventually the idea is that the child develops an inner beat and you can take

the metronome away. He/she will have their own inner beat and their speech

will flow more naturally.. Good luck.

Kerry mom to Steve age 7 apraxic

[Guest guest]

Hi, I'm glad I helped a little.

Riley started with words about the age of 3 very slowly and

sporadically with lots of relapses and regression and losses of

words. We had receptive issues which in retrospect were only because

of boredom and frustration, but as his speech improved, so did his

receptive and that was very soon at/above age level. All of the

gains always outweighed the losses even by only a little bit, so he

has slowly gotten a good vocabulary, and now is beginning with normal

inflections. Not perfect yet but getting there.

The 2 things I would say helped Riley most were

a) his great attitude towards speech therapy and practice. He really

wanted to go in the beginning, and I kept that want going with lots

of encouragement. His motto was/is I'll do my best, and he would, he

would plug away, because he knew people understanding him would be

the end result. If there is nothing else you can do I would say try

and get that kind of work ethic/good attitude toward effort into your

children. That is what really did it for Riley, it really was all

him in that respect.

I really saw no progress with speech therapy until we started with

the PROMPT system of therapy, basically holding the face and putting

pressure on the various muscles and facial features needed for

sounds. That was a boon for us and we were very lucky that our first

slp was training in this system and that we were referred to a

fabulous foundation here in Ontario that deals in this system. I

will try to find some info about it and post links if I can, maybe

someone else can contribute more about it.

> Hi Riley's mom! Your message gives lots of hope to many of us.

Could you tell

> me when your son started to say words and how the speech

progressed? Also,

> what do you think helped the most with speech progression and

receptive

> issues (if that was an issue). thanks and congratulations on the

great

> success! Carolyn

[Guest guest]

From an apraxia kids chat, I found this it may help as well

Question #7: A Tight Voice

My son is now 8 and in second grade. I notice other kids his age seem

to have a real sounding voice in terms of control and tonal quality.

My son sounds babyish and high. He sounds how I sound if I close

something in my throat and just put all the words out there without

taking a breath. Are there any exercises to do? What kind of

professional could see him? I took him to Mass. General 2 years ago

for this and they were not sure. His SLP is working on waking him up,

generalizing an " r " (his last sound), and output as word retrieval is

an issue. She does not see it as an issue as he does not say long

utterances with her. We have had to train virtually every other

muscle in his body; do you think he is not using some muscle in his

throat? He has good prosody and good breath control when asked. He

has SID issues. These older kids have much more subtle issues!

Thank you,

Dear ,

I am going to have to " really " give you a guess here because there

are so many things that could affect the sound, quality or pitch of

your son's voice.

Basically, there could be a number of issues that could be affecting

the quality. I always like to start at tone and work my way up,

because if there are issues with overall body muscle tone (and you

have said you have need to train every muscle in his body), what you

need to know is that breath support may be somewhat compromised. What

that means is there may not be enough (this isn't quite right but I

am trying to generalize here) air pressure to support good valving

(closing of the different ports or channels) to support both speech

movement and tonal, or quality of speech sound.

If the breath support is not quite adequate it will have an impact on

valving (pressure) and on voicing or phonation (the ability to

phonate and produce both non-voiced and voiced sounds). Now, the way

the air stream is directed in speech can be either through the mouth

where it is shaped by the articulators and also impacted by the

valves or opening and closing of the of the lips. The air can also be

directed up into the nose to produce a nasal quality of sound. The

valve that particularly directs this air stream is at the back of the

throat or the velopharyngeal port. Sometimes if the pressure at the

level of the " voice box " larynx is not great enough it will have

implications for valving and air stream direction, which may cause a

high, pitched, somewhat nasal quality.

Another area that may be involved here is the timing; e.g. opening

and closing of all of the ports and valves and the sequence in which

they operate. If, as you say, you child has had underlying motor

issues, but is able to produce most sounds correctly in isolation or

short words with good prosody, but loses this ability when going to

longer utterances, it could be because there are not enough motor

resources to keep everything timed and operating perfectly when there

is a stress (like long and novel productions).

I would suggest that you might want to consider that your child's

system might be getting overloaded when he is asked to produce novel

(unique or not automatic or especially frequently used) sentences.

That the more syllables there are, the higher the grammartic

complexity required, etc. the more difficulty he may have. What is

common to see in children who have reached their motor resource limit

is that voicing or manner (ability to keep voiced production voiced,

unvoiced productions unvoiced or air stream management e.g. voiced,

nasal etc.) may become unstable or drop out. If you reduce the load

on his motor system for production and his voice quality is better

this is a good indicator that that may be happening.

In terms of what to suggest, if this is the case, (and it may not

be), my first suggestion would be look at the requirements of each

word and phrase. In other words how many planes of movement changes

and fine articulator interactions does each word or phrase require?

For example, how many voicing changes occur within each word and

across the phrase and what is the level of language complexity that

is being required? If you are finding a vocal quality breakdown, as I

suggested above, in the longer, more complex utterances looking to

keep the utterances shorter, less syllables, less grammatically

complex and with less voicing changes should help.

This is a complicated question but I would at least urge you and the

clinician to view your child's vocal quality issues within the larger

motor resource capacity framework and see if this helps you resolve

some of your questions and provide a " new way " to look at this issue.

Taken from http://www.promptinstitute.com/parentques.html

> Hi Riley's mom! Your message gives lots of hope to many of us.

Could you tell

> me when your son started to say words and how the speech

progressed? Also,

> what do you think helped the most with speech progression and

receptive

> issues (if that was an issue). thanks and congratulations on the

great

> success! Carolyn

[Guest guest]

Whoops, forgot this: 2 links with info about the prompt system.

http://www.apraxia-kids.org/slps/hayden.html

http://www.promptinstitute.com/index2.html

> Hi Riley's mom! Your message gives lots of hope to many of us.

Could you tell

> me when your son started to say words and how the speech

progressed? Also,

> what do you think helped the most with speech progression and

receptive

> issues (if that was an issue). thanks and congratulations on the

great

> success! Carolyn