Ineffective Communication And Treatment Of Speech Disorders In Children

Communication is central to everything we do. It affects who we are, how we learn, how we interact with other people at home, at school, and at work and almost everywhere. Human communication is done mainly via “SPEECH”; it is an important sign of the normal growth. Acquisition of speech sounds can be considered as a developmental process. ‘Speech disorders’ occur when the person’ speech sounds are not correct or fluent. This differs from ‘Language disorders’, where the person is unable to express himself (expressive language disorders) or to understand others (receptive language disorders) (Association, 1997). One of the critical point is the treatment of articulation problems taking in concern the person’s social, emotional, educational

A child's communication is considered delayed when the child is noticeably behind his or her peers in the acquisition of speech and/or language skills (Shafer, no date). Many forms of speech disorders have been reported. They can be classified according to causative factors as follows
Organic disorder
Motor Speech Disorders

These include speech difficulties due to Childhood Apraxia of Speech (difficulty planning movements for speech) and the dysarthrias (difficulty making movements for speech due to paralysis) Structurally-based Speech Sound Disorders
These include speech difficulties associated with head/facial anatomy differences (e.g., cleft palate, misaligned teeth, or the craniofacial differences associated with some syndromes). Speech Sound Disorders associated with syndromes
These include speech difficulties associated with syndromes such as Down syndrome, metabolic conditions such as galactosemia, and sensory conditions such as hearing impairment.

Functional disorder
Articulation Disorder
This involves difficulty producing one or just a few speech sounds. Another term for this is Functional Speech