If your child is having oral-motor difficulties, he or she may have trouble chewing, sucking, blowing, and/or making certain speech sounds. The child may present with low muscle tone in the face (“long” or “droopy” face) a “flat affect” look, or open mouth breathing.
Dysarthria is a neurogenic speech disorder caused by dysfunctional or damaged innervation to the speech musculature (tongue, lips, soft palate, facial muscles, larynx). Generally, in flaccid dysarthria oral musculature is weak (paresis), or there is significant low muscle tone. In some cases there can even be paralysis. Children with dysarthria usually have early sucking, chewing and swallowing challenges. They may also “drool” for a lengthy period of time. They stick with very soft foods to digest. They also may gag or choke often.
Speech characteristics of dysarthria:
- Marked difficulties with strength, speech and accuracy of articulatory movement
- Imprcise or weakly targeted consonants
- Imprecise or weakly targeted vowels, especially those which involve spreading intrinsic tongue muscles, such as /i/, /ai/, /ei/, oi/
- Weak vocal quality (lack of respiratory support)
- Hypo or hypernasality
- Weak articulatory contacts
- Rapid or slow speaking rate
- Speech clarity disintegrates with lengthy utterances
- Weak targets, especially for / r, s, l / and vowels
- Generally weak, mushy, garbled, imprecise speech