WHAT IN THE WORLD IS A “PHONOLOGICAL DISORDER”?

When a speech pathologist tells you your child has a “phonological disorder”, what exactly does that mean? 

Our phonology is our system of using speech sounds.  Just like all the other things our brains do, they learn about speech sounds and how to speak in an orderly manner, developing “rules” for how we form sounds and words.  These rules change as our brains grow and as we get more experience with listening to sounds and forming sounds.  That’s why the speech of a two-year-old, a five-year-old and a ten-year-old is different, progressing from “baby talk” to very adult-like speech patterns.

Speech scientists have studied these progressive changes in our speech patterns and have developed some timelines for when certain changes usually take place.  Because of their work, we can look at a child’s speech system (phonology )and determine if it is as mature as it ought to be for a certain age.  If not, the speech pathologist may suggest giving your child some help to acquire new speech “rules”, so that his/her speech is similar to that of other children of the same age. 

One of the big questions that parents always ask is “Why does my child sound like this?  What is the cause of the speech delay or disorder that we’re noticing?” 

Sometimes it can be traced to ear infections or middle ear fluid associated with allergies or asthma.  When ear infections are chronic or frequent or when there is often fluid in the middle ear, children are not hearing accurately and may learn speech patterns or “rules” that are distorted or wrong.  Some children have difficulty learning to move their lips, tongue and jaw in a coordinated way.  Speech is to the tongue, lips and jaw what handwriting is to the fingers and hand.  Sometimes, for some people, it just takes longer to learn.  Whatever the reason, there are some tried and true ways to help your child speak more accurately, and that’s the good news!

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES

Final Consonant Deletion

• Omitting the last sound in a word
• Example:                                   boat->bow

Velar Fronting

• Producing a back sound (k,g or h) further forward in the mouth, so that it might sound like t,d or another front sound
• Example:                                   go->doe  or cat->tat

Stridency Deletion

• Eliminating the “airy” quality of strident sounds, like f,v,s,z,sh,ch, zh or j.  The sound may be omitted altogether or it might be replaced by a “stop” sound, such as t,d,p or b.
• Example:                                   sun->tun  or   fork->pork

Cluster Reduction

• Reducing a “cluster” of two consonants down to just one, three consonants down to just two or omitting the whole “cluster” altogether
• Example:                                   stop->top  or  square->scare

Prevocalic Voicing

• Adding voice to an unvoiced consonant at the beginning of a word.  Unvoiced consonants are produced without vibrating the vocal cords, as in f, s, sh, ch and sometimes th.
• Example:                                   scissors->zizzers or chin->jin

Assimilation

• Producing consonants in a word all in the same place in the mouth. 
• Example:                                   soap->bope or penny->tenny

There are other phonological processes, but these are the most common.  Understanding which ones apply to your child can help you to know how you can help.