Close Your Eyes So They Can Watch Your Mouth

Full transcript

I'm Nicole. I'm a pediatric speech pathologist, and I am the lead treating SLP on a treatment efficacy study here at the Motor Speech Lab at NYU. I'm coming to you from my office. I was so inspired at ASHA, our annual convention, to start sharing some of the techniques I've been using for motor speech therapy for kids. I'm just going to do quick tidbits.

One of the things I wanted to share quickly is that this type of therapy is predicated on the principle of integral stimulation, which is: watch me, look at me, and learn. So we want the kids to be looking at our face. We want them to be getting the cues from our mouth and our articulators to help them produce the sound sequences or the word sequence, which is going to be the target.

We frequently have them look at us, but this can feel really overwhelming and intense for many of our kids. So what I do is I close my eyes. I don't need them to be making eye contact with me. I need them to be looking at my mouth. So I'll say, "Here, I'm going to close my eyes. I just want you to look here when we say the word." And I'll say, "Bee." And I'll open my eyes a little bit just to make sure they're looking. This takes some of the pressure off.

So that's my way of doing it. My quick tip of the day: getting them...