• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Banter Speech & Language

Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

  • Home
  • Our Speech Pathologists
  • Shop
    • Speech
    • Language
    • Stuttering
    • Reading
    • Decodable Readers
    • Writing
    • Primary School
    • High School
    • Online resources
    • Business Templates
    • NDIS Templates
    • NDIS Training
  • Cart
  • Banter Supervision
  • Contact Us
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Voice / Indirect voice therapy: 10 practical things you can do to help your child achieve and keep a healthy voice

Indirect voice therapy: 10 practical things you can do to help your child achieve and keep a healthy voice

David Kinnane · 24 July 2014 · Leave a Comment

Seeing your child suffer because of a voice disorder is awful.  But, for many common voice problems, you can help:

1. Dial it down: when chatting, turn down the car radio, television and/or the Minecraft (or, better yet, turn them off).  When there’s a lot of background noise, we automatically speak more loudly – it’s called the Lombard effect.  Reduce the noise, and your child won’t need to shout to be heard.

2. Sip and swallow – don’t cough – to clear your throat: When your child coughs, he or she bangs their vocal cords together.  Two much coughing can lead to nodules, a common cause of voice disorders in kids.  Sipping and swallowing is a far less damaging way of clearing your throat.

3. Give in to the flu: tell your child not to talk too much or sing when sick, especially if their throat hurts.  Belting or talking through the pain will only make things worse.

4. Discourage silly voices: monster croaks and anime squeals have their time and place – every now and then.  But do it too often and it can hurt the voice box.

5. Drink lots of water: a healthy voice box needs lots of moisture.  Unsurprisingly, water is generally accepted to be the best maker of things wet.  It’s certainly the most freely available.  So drink up!

6. Spice DOWN meals and de-caffeinate drinks: foods like curries, chocolate, and nuts can dry out and/or irritate the voice box.  So can caffeinated soft-drinks and energy drinks.  On the other hand, ice-cream and full cream milk and yoghurts can cause too many mucous secretions on the vocal cords and increase the temptation to clear your throat.

7. Bag the fags: as Yul Brynner used to say before he died a horrible death, “Just Don’t Smoke”.  If you can’t quit altogether, at least don’t smoke in the house or near your child.

8. Spot training has its limits: you can tell a lot about how healthy someone is by their voice – that’s why sick people are often sound said to sound sickly.  The best way to have a healthy voice box is to be healthy.  So general health tips – get lots of regular sleep, eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly – can also help the voice box.  You don’t need to change everything.  Lots of little changes can make a big difference (and won’t defeat your willpower as easily).

9. Watch out for acid reflux and get it checked out if in doubt: If your child reports too much mucous in the throat, heart (or throat) burn, mucous dripping down the back of the nose into the throat, a “lump” in the throat, the need to clear the throat a lot, he or she might have reflux.  Reflux can damage the tissue of your voice-box and contribute to a voice disorder.  Your GP can arrange a reflux check.  If your child has reflux, manage it carefully – e.g. avoid eating and drinking 2 hours before bedtime, use medications prescribed or recommended by your GP to control it, raise the head of the bed 15 centimetres, and eliminate foods and drinks that seem to set it off.

10. Spring clean: reduce dust, smoke and chemical fumes (glues, sprays, etc) that can irritate the voice box.

Common sense suggestions like these are sometimes called “indirect voice therapy” – because we are helping the voice box indirectly (rather than by working directly on the voice).  There is good evidence that indirect voice therapy helps.  But we also know that indirect therapy may not be enough for some children with voice disorders; and that a combination of indirect therapy and direct voice therapy (working on voice production) is more effective than just following tips like these (e.g. Behrman et al., 2008).

So direct therapy for children who like to talk a lot is where we will head next.

See also:

  • Voice therapy for kids who like to talk and talk. When “vocal rest” isn’t an option
  • My child has a voice problem. So what?
  • Child voice therapy – an introduction

Key source: La Trobe Communication Clinic (2010). Handouts for Voice Clients.

Image: http://tinyurl.com/m4dlhwt

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.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Email

Print Friendly, PDF & EmailPrint Friendly

Share this:

  • Email
  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn

Related

Voice child voice problems, indirect voice therapy

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Get in touch

115 Queen Street
North Strathfield NSW Australia
(02) 87573838
hello@banterspeech.com.au
Monday-Friday: 8.30am to 5.30pm
Saturday: 7.30am to 2.30pm
Closed Sundays and public holidays

Shop at our store

  • NDIS Incident Management and Reportable Incidents System Policy and Procedures $50.00 including GST
  • Blanks 3: How are things the same? $4.99 including GST
  • Speech and Language Screener Speech and Language Screener Letter and Form $9.99 including GST
  • Maths Language I: Prefixes $4.99 including GST
  • "Is" and "Are" (Copula Verb Forms) Sentence Workout $4.99 including GST
  • CCVC Words in Sentences: Is Stan a Brat? $3.99 including GST
  • NAPLAN: Year 3 - Essential Language Convention Skills for NAPLAN (Nouns and Proper Nouns) $5.99 including GST
  • Subject-Negative (Don't)-Verb Sentences Subject-Negative ('Don't')-Verb (SNegV Don't) Sentence Builders $4.99 including GST

Store categories

January Featured Resource

  • Setting Goals for this Year: an Oral Language Workout $10.00 including GST

Recent articles

  • My child’s speech is hard to understand. Which therapy approach is appropriate?
  • Free preview: How to Supervise Speech Pathologists Properly in Private Practice
  • Selective Mutism: key things to know
  • Help your child to make inferences when reading

Featured Articles

What do you think about when you think about speech pathology?

Ask Us Anything: 17 things our readers and followers really want to know about speech pathology (but were too shy to ask)!

Language therapy works. But can we make it better?

Stuttering: what do we mean by ‘recovery’?

Lifting the lid on speech therapy: How we assess and treat children with unclear speech – and why

Too many children can’t read. We know what to do. But how should we do it?

I want to help my late talker to speak, but I’m stuck at home. What can I do?

Free Resources

Big book of child speech pathology answers

Getting ready to read at big school

Is your kindy kid really reading

The Scatter-Slayer Adventures

Free decodable: Book 1 of The Scatter-Slayer Adventures. The first in our decodable digital ‘select-your-sequel’ series for reluctant readers, aged 7-12.

Get our free resource

Subscribe to receive our blog articles

Check out our therapy and provider resources Go to our shop

Banter Speech & Language

Copyright © 2021 · BANTER SPEECH & LANGUAGE PTY LIMITED ·

  • Articles
  • Shop
  • Cart
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Non-necessary

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.