Lisp - Causes and Signs of Lisp

There are the following types of this disease:

• interdental lisp;
• labiodental lisp;
• dental lisp;
• hissing lisp;
• lateral lisp.

This speech disorder is characterized by the appearance of a peculiar noise during conversation, which is formed due to the tongue getting between the teeth (mainly the front ones) and when pronouncing sibilant sounds.

Causes

In medicine, the following causes of lisping are distinguished:

• hereditary predisposition;
• insufficient tongue mobility;
• violation bite;
• impaired phonemic hearing;
• underdeveloped speech;
• gap between the front teeth;
• oral cavity injuries;
• short frenulum of the tongue;
• low tongue mobility.

Symptoms

The main symptoms of lisping are:

• incorrect positioning of the tongue during pronunciation;
• impaired pronunciation of sibilant and hissing sounds;
• whispering appears during the pronunciation of some words.

Diagnostics

If you notice the first symptoms in your child lisping, then you should immediately consult a speech therapist. If a lisp has already developed in an adult, you should make an appointment with a cortodontist.

Before starting the treatment itself, the doctor conducts a comprehensive speech therapy examination, during which he/she identifies:

• the state of hearing and vision;
• the child's vocabulary;
• the features of sound pronunciation;
• the mobility of the articulatory apparatus and its condition;
• the features of psychoverbal development;
• the features of auditory writing and grammar;
• the development of visual perception.

It is also recommended to make an appointment with a cat-nose-throat specialist to check the correctness and rhythm of nasal breathing.

Treatment

Treatment of a lisp takes about long period of time. During the treatment, the doctor carries out pedagogical, psychocorrectional, speech therapy and communicative work, which consists of the following actions:

• in the production of sounds;
• in articulatory gymnastics;
• in tongue massage;
• in exercises to automate hissing and whistling sounds.

As a rule, lisping in children goes away by the age of 7-8.

If such a pathology occurs in adult patients, then surgical intervention may be required. Surgical intervention involves dental prosthetics and correction of the tongue muscles.

Prevention

In order to prevent this disease from occurring in the future, parents should work on speech development with their child themselves.

You should also follow these recommendations:

• take your child to see a dentist regularly;
• teach your child counting rhymes and poems;
• if you detect speech defects in your child, immediately contact a speech therapist.