10 Top Speech Therapy Tips for Children with Down Syndrome

The following list of SALT ideas for young children with Down syndrome might help you and your child develop their oral motor skills.

A few of the speech therapy tools for children with Down syndrome

Every child is a unique individual.  Each one develops at their own pace, responds well to their favourite toys and has their own strengths and areas that need support. This is no less true for children with Down's Syndrome, so trust your instincts.

Fun with Speech Therapy

Most children with Down's Syndrome need SALT sessions to help them communicate more easily and speak more clearly. This can focus on the use of signing/Makaton, jaw position exercises and using certain types of cups, toys etc, or it can be about having fun with sounds and using visual ways to break down words.

I was a language teacher in a previous life, well, in my life before becoming a Mum. I used to teach English as a Foreign Language and that very often entailed helping students to produce quite tricky sounds in a fun and relaxed, even silly way.                                


I decided to take the same approach with Natty. She's been having trouble with ____sp words, such as crisp. They tended to come out as ____ps, or crips.

So, we took each syllable as a unit and reeeeeally exaggerated it, pulling funny faces and giggling as we went.

crisssssssssP

The P sound is what is called an unvoiced plosive, which basically means that lots of air shoots out of your mouth when you say it.
So, you can have masses of fun practising moving paper in front of your mouth, or, as we demonstrate here, blowing someone's hair around.

Watch Natty and I work on the word wasssssssssP at story time.