Can Speech Therapy Help with Voice Disorders?

Whenever you hear the word speech therapy, you probably assume that it only helps people who need help developing their speech sounds. Some people also believe that speech therapy is only for people who stutter. However, that isn’t the case. Speech therapy can also help people who have voice disorders. 

So, what is a voice disorder? How can a speech pathology help with this issue? Today, we’re going to share with you several things you should know about Ontario speech pathologists and voice disorders. 

What’s a Voice Disorder? 

For those who don’t know, a voice disorder is when the loudness, pitch, and quality aren’t suitable for the geographic location, cultural background, gender, or age of a person. 

According to ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association), a voice disorder is when a person shows concern about having a weird voice that doesn’t meet their day-to-day needs.  

There are a lot of various forms of voice disorders. There are also different reasons why people develop this problem. Typically, they’re organic. This means there is something neurogenically or structurally causing change to the voice. It can often be functional. This means it has resulted from wrongful use of the voice even if the structural parts are normal.  

There are particular groups of kids who have higher possibilities of developing voice disorders. One of the most common groups is kids with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Oftentimes, these kids utilize their voice in a hypofunctional approach or have a loud voice. 

How To Know If Your Kid has a Voice Disorder? 

Kids with voice disorders might show the following indications. 

• Kids with voice disorders may completely lose their voice. 
• They might constantly clear their throat or cough a lot. 
• Voices that sound like the kid is releasing a lot of air from their nose.  

• Voices that are hypo-nasal, which means they sound like they’ve got a blocked nose while speaking. 
• Voices that are extremely quiet or extremely loud. 
• Voices that are much lower or higher compared to other kids of their gender or age. 
• A hoarse or harsh sounding voice.  

Why Does a Voice Disorder Occur? 

Typically, voice disorders in kids are caused by loud talking or excessive shouting, excessive use of their voice during play, or frequent screaming.  

Kids can also experience a voice disorder after common childhood illnesses. Voice disorders can also occur due to psychological or emotional reasons. There are also a couple of rare illnesses that can cause voice disorders in kids. 

What Should You Do If Your Kid has a Voice Disorder? 

A voice disorder may not appear like it will have a huge influence on your kid. However, your kid might develop chronic voice disorders that can persist until they become an adult. This is particularly true if you don’t support them. 

Having a voice disorder can result in problems around confidence and self-esteem. It can also lead to stress and anxiety in cases where your kid needs to use their voice, such as giving a speech or during a recital.  

If your kid has a voice disorder, don’t hesitate to visit a professional speech pathologist for help. 

Speech Experts to Prepare Your Kids for School

There are times when we have to decide to send our kids to school. They are also getting older, and they need to interact with different people. They need to make friends improve themselves when it comes to interactions. We have to learn the proper ways to know more about other things that they can see around them. It could be challenging for some parents to imagine that their kids will be going to school sooner. A part of them is not yet ready to let their kids start going to school. 

We are confident that we are always there beside our kids. This is one of the reasons why we send them to different kinds of learning activities and offline classes. We believe that they need our guidance to succeed on their journey. Another problem that other parents face is that their kids are not that talkative. They don’t know how to communicate with another kid. There are chances that they keep themselves quiet for a very long time. 

We can’t always force our kids to speak and talk all the time. There are cases where they want to talk whenever they think they are safe or can communicate in a good way. There are so many worries that most parents are thinking about now, especially since they cannot handle this one on their own. We always need the help of the expert so that they will be guided and have the chance to feel better when it comes to sending their kids to different types of schools in the future. 

You can help your own kid now to prepare for school by reading some storybooks. We all know that most kids love to read stories. You have to use a book that can be very easy to learn more about. You can have picture books with short sentences to easily follow the story. Others would be using this method so that they can help their kids to improve the comprehension part. It is a great way to learn more vocabulary words and help them comprehend each phrase or sentence. We don’t need to expose them to some novels as they are not ready to read those words. 

Of course, you can let yourself involve in some of the activities by helping your kids. You have to think of some ideas to practice his motor skills. Practicing his motor skills means that you have to spend a lot of money. You can involve your kid in doing some activities, such as washing the dishes. There is always a nice thing that you can do when handcrafts. It is also different that they have their own ways such as the help of the speech therapy London Ontario. 

It is also excellent that you let them recognize some of your family members’ names. It is a great story to learn some letters and numbers simultaneously. This may sound very basic, but some kids have a hard time recognizing letters and numbers.