Often, our kiddos speak words that we don’t understand. Children below the age of 4 often are unable to make the correct letter sound, such as k, c or l. Most children don’t need a speech therapist and these speech issues resolve on their own. You can help your child by understanding the cause of speech articulation problems. And also, by trying out tongue exercises and activities to develop their oral motor skills.
Speech Sound Challenges for Toddlers
Many toddlers are unable to pronounce some words properly. These challenges include:
Substitutions
They substitute sounds of one letter with another. This often makes it difficult for parents to understand what the child is trying to say. For instance, saying ‘tup’ instead of ‘cup’.
Deletions
Speech delayed children also omit or delete specific sounds. For instance, they may refer to a ‘train’ as ‘tain’.
Missing Syllables
When a child with a speech delay has to pronounce a big word like, ‘telephone’, he might say ‘tephone’.
Additions
Along with missing syllables, children also often add an additional sound to a word. For instance, the world ‘slide’ might be pronounced as ‘suhlide’.
Tongue Exercises and Activities for Speech Articulation
To help your toddler improve his speech articulation, you can try out these tongue exercises and activities:
Exercises to Improve Tongue Strength
To improve tongue strength, we encourage the child to give his tongue full movement throughout his mouth. For this, you can try these exercises:
- Place some peanut butter or whipped cream on the roof of your child’s mouth. Ask him to try licking the food. This allows your child to move his tongue to the top of his mouth, opening up sounds like t,d,n,l. Later, you can try placing the same inside your child’s cheeks. Choose a food your child likes. This will encourage him to better perform the activity.
- Now place the same peanut butter, or you can try honey or maple syrup on the top lip. Request your child to lick the food using his lips.
- Give your child a small piece of candy or a cheerio and ask him to move this from one cheek to the another, inside his mouth. You can also ask him to pick up the cheerio with his tongue, while placing it on a plate in front of him.
- Sing ‘Lalalalala’ with him and try it without moving the jaw. Sing it using the tip of the tongue.
- Try doing a tongue pop. Place your tongue to the top of the mouth and then pop it. Do 10-12 pops at a time.
Exercises to Improve Lip Strength
These exercises to improve lip strength are always a hit with young kids. I suggest you do them yourself and enjoy your child to mimicking the actions:
- Round your lips and make sounds like ‘ooo’, ‘eee’ and oeee’
- Really stretch your lips. Relax and repeat 10 times.
- Make a duck face. Purse the lips. Move the lips to the right and then the left.
- Drink from a straw. Blow bubbles in the straw.
- Press your lips together and open with a smack.
Exercises to Improve Jaw Strength
Try these exercises for jaw strength:
- Open and close mouth as wide as possible.
- Get Yourself these Bite and Chew Tubes. Ask your child to really press their teeth on the tubes. Release and repeat.
What’s the best Way To Do Speech Articulation Exercises?
Some tips to help you try these tongue exercises with the least resistance for your child:
- Practice these exercises with your child. Children love mimicking adults. It makes everything so exciting for them.
- Don’t try all these exercises in one sitting. Do 5 minutes of these exercises in each sitting. Sneak them in during playtime or even dinner time.
- Be calm. Don’t get frustrated if it isn’t happening in the first two or three times. Keep going. It will definitely happen in the third try.
As always, I hope this article will help you build better communication skills in toddlers. If you notice your child struggling and these strategies aren’t helping, I would love to help you determine your child’s individual needs. Please reach out to set up a free consultation. We are here to support you as you help your child blossom!
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If you enjoyed reading Tongue Exercises For Speech Articulation in Toddlers, you might also enjoy reading:
My Child Isn’t Talking Yet: When To Be Concerned?
5 Tips To Building Communication Skills in Toddlers
