Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

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Lidcombe Program stuttering activities: Volume 2 printable activities for face-to-face and telehealth therapy now available

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When we published The Lidcombe Program for stuttering: my 10 favourite therapy activities back in 2014, we had no idea how popular it would be. Thousands of people from more than 20 countries have downloaded our free resource. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many parents and speech pathologists reaching out to thank us for sharing activity ideas.

More help needed

We’ve also had a lot of requests from time-poor parents and speech pathologists for specific materials/activities to help them do the treatment. Recently, we’ve had requests from speech pathologists and parents looking for materials to do the treatment by telehealth (e.g. by Zoom, Coviu or Skype).

We listened!

We’re now thrilled to announce the publication of Volume 2: Printable activities for face-to-face and telehealth delivery of the Lidcombe Program

Why a pack of printable activities?

We wanted to publish this pack of printable activities for four reasons:

  • “Telehealth” (e.g. Zoom, Coviu, Skype and other webcam-based) delivery of the Lidcombe Program has become more popular as the evidence base has grown (e.g. Bridgman et al., 2014). Although some face-to-face resources (like books) can be adapted easily for telehealth delivery, others can’t. With these activities, both the speech pathologist and the family can access exactly the same resources.
  • Some children (e.g. very talkative children and children with moderate or severe stuttering) may need more time in Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program to get and stay fluent. Table-top activities like the ones in this pack can help maintain a child’s “buy in”, attention and interest to enable families to focus most on what matters: their child’s fluency.
  • Some parents have told us that they have used up all the ideas in Volume 1 and want more activity ideas!
  • For economic and/or cultural reasons, some children do not have access to toys and other resources at home for use in therapy. We want to make the therapy accessible to everyone. (That’s why speech pathologists who purchase this pack for use in their clinic are licensed to share this resource with an unlimited number of their clients without additional cost per client.)

Activities

This guide includes 10 low-preparation, printable activities for children who are being treated with the Lidcombe Program for stuttering. These activities are for children in the highly structured and semi-structured (“practice”) phases of Stage 1 of the treatment and are designed to be used in consultation/with the guidance of the child’s speech pathologist.

What you get

  • 10 “print and play” fun activities with easy-to-follow directions specifically designed to help you administer 10-15 minutes of therapy per day painlessly;
  • 148 pages of printable materials suitable for both face-to-face therapy and telehealth (e.g. Zoom, Coviu, Skype) – even over teleheawlth, the speech pathologist and client can use the same materials;
  • 552 high quality photographs depicting common objects (nouns), places, action words (verbs), and people;
  • our 8 Speech Legends including Justice the Ninja, Viv the Pirate, Joss the Robot, and Arden the Warrior Princess;
  • 6 attractive colour game boards, including our Smooth Stones Path, Pirate Hunt, Butterfly Chase, Keys to the Castle, Dinosaur Babies, and Freight Attack;
  • lists of carrier phrases, description attributes, and conversation starters to help deliver the therapy at the level set by the speech pathologist;
  • guidance on how to use and adapt the activities for different levels of fluency and language; and
  • additional reinforcement of the main therapy goal – stutter-free speech – with regular reminders from game characters in many activities to focus on smooth speech.

A companion volume

We designed the pack to include lots of cross-over between this pack and Volume 1. For example, we’ve deliberately used the popular grid-format used in Volume 1 to help parents and speech pathologists adapt the games to help administer the therapy. We also encourage parents and speech pathologists to “mix and match” activities and materials from Volume 1 and 2 to maintain interest.

We hope you find the activities as useful in delivering the Lidcombe Program therapy to children who stutter as we do. You can find our Lidcombe Program Stuttering Activities Volume 2 at our Teachers Pay Teachers store.

If this isn’t for you now, no worries! Volume 1 remains free to download.

You can also read a lot more about the Lidcombe Program and other evidence-based stuttering programs by checking out our free articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

The Pesky Lisp Fixer: a new evidence-based approach for kids whose interdental lisps won’t stay fixed!

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Don’t you hate those pesky interdental lisps? You know, the ones that won’t stay fixed?

To fix an interdental lisp – those lisps where your tongue sticks out between your teeth when you try to say /s/ – speech pathologists used to start with simple tasks, like saying an /s/ on its own. Once the child had mastered their /s/, we progressed in tiny hops (like baby bunny kittens) to slightly harder tasks. This traditional approach works.

But it’s SO SLOW!

Many kids – particularly older and more mature kids – hate being treated like babies. And, even after finishing traditional treatment, many kids have difficulties using their “new /s/” on words they haven’t practised and in more natural tasks, like story-telling and conversation. Which is, of course, the main point of trying to fix a lisp!

A new approach

More recent research evidence supports a different route for better results. Once a child can say the sound on his or her own, randomly mixing up hard and easy tasks can have quicker results that transfer more efficiently to real-world, lisp-free speech (e.g. see Skelton, 2004).

(You can read more about why using randomised practice, non-word practice and other principles of motor learning and speech here).

Our Pesky Lisp Fixer program has three stages

  1. Auditory Bombardment: 2 minutes per day – listening and tuning into the sound and practising it on its own. Audio file included!
  2. Our /s/-Syllable Boot Camp: Based on principles of motor speech, the boot camp involves 10-15 minutes a day of high repetition practice of nonsense syllables designed to get the tongue, lips and teeth working together with different vowel and consonant sequences in random order.
  3. Randomised Practice: Once you’ve conquered the boot camp, this gives you 20-30 minute sessions of imitating and naming words with /s/ in them, across all word positions. Again using a high repetition, randomised approach, we mix imitation, naming, and sentence generation tasks, with old-fashioned story telling, using over 200 high quality photographs – no cutesy vector clip art.

This program works best if an adult is around to give clear feedback every now and then – but no more than occasionally.

So download the Pesky Lisp Fixer today and get straight into getting rid of that pesky lisp!

access the pesky lisp fixer from our teachers pay teachers store

Related articles:

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Can I do stuttering therapy online via video calls?

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Yes.

From the comforts of a big city, it might not seem like there’s a shortage of speech pathologists with decent stuttering assessment and therapy experience. But there is.

Too often, simple things have stopped people who stutter from getting the help they need, when they need it. Not living in a city. Not having a car or access to public transport. Juggling multiple kids. Working 9 to 5 (or longer) and not having time to get out of the office. Physical disabilities and impairments. Social anxiety or cultural concerns about leaving the house and coming into a clinic. Given the evidence about the importance of early intervention for pre-schoolers, and some of the serious possible long-term effects of unmanaged stuttering on work, life and health outcomes, current access to services for many people who stutter is just not good enough.

Hey! It’s the 21st century! Technology now exists to break down some of these barriers. And we’ve decided to use it to help people who stutter to get therapy.

At Banter Speech & Language, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of My Online Stuttering Clinic. It’s an online stuttering assessment and therapy service offered by Banter Speech & Language to existing and new clients – both children and adults – who stutter or might be stuttering.

Continuous improvements

Don’t get us wrong. Despite its promise and growing evidence base, we know there are still some barriers to delivering quality speech therapy online. For example:

  • Medicare and private health insurance rebates are not yet available for clients for speech pathology services delivered online. We hope that changes soon – especially for clients living in rural and remote places and for clients who can’t afford private therapy or access speech pathology for other reasons. (Side note: This is one reason we’ll soon be announcing a pro-bono program – watch this space.)
  • The technology isn’t perfect. Sometimes, videos freeze, or the picture or sound drops out. Blame it on the NBN, the weather, or too many kids playing Minecraft, but we’ll do our best to keep things simple and to work around glitches and gremlins if and when they crop up – even if it means going old school and picking up a phone from time-to-time!

As technology improves, we’ll keep working hard to provide people who stutter with a quality tele-health service.

Evidence-based, quality service 

At Banter Speech & Language, we only provide evidence-based stuttering therapies. We offer a range of treatments, including the Lidcombe Program and Westmead Program for children who stutter, Time Out, Video Self-Modelling and the Camperdown Program – a form of prolonged speech treatment, for adults who stutter. If you stutter, we’re happy to take you through your treatment options, the evidence for and against each, and our recommendations. We’re also happy to give you evidence-based tips to help manage stuttering, e.g. for school or work. That’s why we spend so much time reading the latest research and will keep doing so.

We’re on top of the growing research base supporting online stuttering therapy, especially that published by the Australian Stuttering Research Centre (e.g. Onslow et al., 2014 and Carey et al., 2012). We’re also up-to-date on developments in tele-health and speech pathology (e.g. Hines et al., 2015, Armfield et al., 2015, Keck & Doarn, 2014, and Edwards et al., 2012) and video-based health care services, generally (e.g. Bryan, 2015).

So if you stutter and want help, but can’t make it in to the clinic, please get in touch with us to discuss online stuttering therapy options.

In the meantime, feel free to take a look at our free articles summarising some of the latest research about stuttering.

Related articles:

Children:

Adults:

 

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

I’m an adult who lisps. Do I need speech therapy?

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Not unless you want help.

Before the age of six, it’s relatively common for children to lisp /s/ and /z/ sounds. But, for some adults, a lisp can be embarrassing, affecting their social activities and/or professional life.

But lots of adults lisp and there is some evidence to suggest that it’s becoming more common among some groups of young adults and acceptable to society at large (e.g. Van Borsel et al., 2007).

What the research says

The evidence about adults who lisp is actually pretty patchy. But here’s what some of the published studies suggest:

  • Men: compared to men who do not lisp, men who lisp are perceived by strangers as having lower levels of:
    • speaking ability;
    • intelligence;
    • education;
    • masculinity; and
    • friendliness (Mower et al., 1978).
  • Women: Compared to women who do not lisp, women who lisp were considered by strangers to be less:
    • cooperative;
    • kind;
    • friendly; and
    • “nice” (!) (Syrett & Rorson, 2005).
  • Men and women:
    • 16.3% of people who lisped or who had problems with /r/ said that they thought people had problems understanding them; and
    • 38.9% of people who lisped or had problems with /r/ said that they felt insecure in speech situations and that their speech differences interfered with their work or social life (Verissimo et al., 2012).

Should adults who lisp be “treated”?

Let’s be very clear on this. Many adults who lisp do not want speech therapy. And nor should they.

Lisps are usually considered minor errors and rarely have a big impact on your intelligibility (Verissimo et al., 2012). Some people, including some celebrities, see their lisp as part of their personal trademark or image. Some people don’t care at all about what others think about their pronunciation of /s/. Obviously, none of these people need “treatment”.

For a speech difference to be considered a speech disorder, you need more than a few folk you’ve never met having a vaguely negative reaction to your speech on their first listen. Someone’s first impressions often don’t give you any idea of the impact of a person’s speech difference on their “real world” (Mower et al., 1978). To warrant the label “disorder”, a speech difference like a lisp also needs to interfere with your communication (Van Riper, 1972) and participation in social and/or work activities that matter to you (ICF, 2001). It’s clear from the Verissimo study that the majority of adults who lisp do not think that their speech differences affect their work or social life, although a sizeable minority do.

Lisping in adults is not rare. For example, one study of almost 750 Dutch-speaking university students found that almost a quarter (23.3%) of them lisped, with no significant difference in prevalence between men and women (Van Borsel et al., 2007). For English-speaking populations, these results may need to be read with a grain of salt because of language and phonology differences between Dutch and English. But the study does provide compelling evidence that adult lisping may not be as rare as many speech pathologists think. The researchers in that study also speculated that people might be more tolerant of minor speech differences these days than in days past.

Interestingly, one variable not considered by any of the studies referenced above is sexual preference. It’s a popular stereotype that many gay men lisp, and some gay men proudly lisp to express their sexual preference and identity (Van Borsel et al., 2007). This may explain, in part, why some of the enquiries for help I receive from adults who lisp are from straight men.

Recent studies suggest that:

  • speakers who lisp may be conscious of their speech differences, but, overall, the impact on their professional and social life appears to be limited; and
  • interestingly, adults in “speaking professions” are, on average, more secure in their speech differences than adults who do not speak as part of their professional activities (Verissimo et al., 2012).

Clinical bottom line

Many adults from all walks of life and cultural backgrounds lisp. Lisps are not rare. Some people celebrate their lisps. Others, don’t care about them one way or another. These people do not want – and they certainly don’t need – speech therapy.

Some adults who lisp are self-conscious about it and may feel their speech differences are interfering with their communication, confidence, and pursuit of work and life goals. For these people, speech pathologists can help with therapy (or “training” if the term is preferred), ideally based on principles of motor speech. But only for people who want help to get rid of their lisp.

If you have a lisp and want help, we’ve developed a course for you. Welcome!

Go to the lisp fixer course

Related articles:

Principal sources:

  1. Verissimo, A., Van Borsel, J., De Britto Pereira, M. (2012). Residual /s/ and /r/ distortions: The perspective of the speaker. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 14(2), 183-186.
  2. Van Borsel, J., Van Rentergem, S., Verhaeghe, L. (2007). The prevalence of lisping in young adults. Journal of Communication Disorders, 40, 493-502.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/zbkk9nu

David

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Check out our therapy and provider resources Go to our shop