Do you know any exercises for mouth/tongue for a 4 year old?

[bluebear]

Ds is 4 and a bit, has had hearing problems for years which is why we thought his speech was below average...but he was assessed this morning and the new idea is that his mouth and lips aren't working well enough.
He is being referred for speech and language therapy but won't be seen for at least 4 months so I was wondering if anyone has been here before and can describe any mouth exercises we could start him on while we wait.
TIA.

There is an exercise called Mr Tongue. He cleans his windows and pokes his head out to see what's going on, looks in both directions etc etc.

I'll have a google and see whether I can find him

Hopefully one of the mumsnet speech therapists will know more but the exercises usually recommended are:

blowing/sucking through a straw

• blowing bubbles using one of those little wands that you get with tubes of bubble mixture

• putting something around the mouth (eg jam, chocolate etc) and encouraging your child to lick it off.

I don't know how many of those will be relevant for your ds. A lot will depend on the areas he has difficulty with.

Sorry but PMSL at SantaClausFrau!

Thanks Soapbox and CT, SantClausFrau.

I added the 'for a 4 year old' to the thread title as I thought I'd get dodgy replies otherwise

How is he with food? I thought that eating a normal diet provided a lot of the tongue exercise ...

They were doing this on House of nightmare children or whatever it's called and they were doing some biting and munching with one little girl to strenghthen her mouth muscles.

She had DS and had trouble chewing food so she sucked everything.

HTH

you can buy it from here - but it is £12!!

Mogwai is a SALT who posts here, perhaps she can point you in the right direction for a freebie one!

He's ok with all food now, but until he was 3 he couldn't swallow food that 'balls up' like bread so he mainly ate rice based meals. He was also vegetarian until recently so no meat chewing.
He had an operation which means that he can swallow properly now, and he eats meat in his school dinners.
I'm trying to think of chewy veggie foods now (can't see my veggie dh being too happy about giving ds non-veggie chewy sweets which are the only things that come to my mind)

PMSL - Hausfrau

Surprisingly I had no suspicious hits

Thanks Soapbox!

my ds was encouraged to make up silly sounds which particularly includes..free,frah,froo,fre/lah,la,lee,sn sounds.
practice in front of a mirror with an adult so he can see what he`s supposed to be doing whilst watching his own mouth
blow bubbles
blow out candles but with cut off short straw as its more effective
go from lip spread(wide grin) to round lips with similar sounds to ee,ah,oo,eh as well as putting tongue behind top teeth and making sounds there
put something sweet on top lip and encourage them to lick it off
do each of these 3 times a day

hope htese help but it does also depend on what speech problems hes having in the first place but also get him to play listening games..ie am i saying free or three? using rhymes with sk /sn/fr/th sounds in and ask him to say each one to make him understand what word hes saying ..for example we have a similar game made up like snakes and ladders and he will land on a square that says put on you rskates as were going skating or watch out there is a snake ahead`

hope this helps

Thanks Bambi - at the moment I'm not sure which sounds he finds hard, just that his speech is hard to understand and miles behind his friends. He was last assessed when he was 3 and a half but refused to talk to the therapist (he is very shy) - she hid outside the door and heard him say 'sink', that one word was enough for her to 'sign him off' from speech and language because 'it's a hard word'.

I have mr tongue. May (should) have 2 copies, if I do I can post you the spare (but warning may take me a week to see whether I do have 2 copies or not as my house is full of crap- good news is we are doing a sort out this week). I may be able to pcopy them if I don't have 2, but I don't have access to free pcopying and its quite long iirc.

Also yoghurt on top lip get them to lick it off, tiny sweets on place- pick up with tongue, get a tray and blow feathers, ping pong balls etc around the tray.

Have a look at the apraxia kids website (google for it), there'll be loads on there. Also have a look at Nancy Kaufman's website, and the kaufman cards. I may sell mine (I have box 1) in the near future (I'd ebay them). If you wanted them let me know and I would check out the cheapest price on ebay and knock something off). I haven't sold them yet as I was kind of wondering how ds3 would turn out, but I think maybe I should start being more positive about him :-)

aha I do have 2 copies of mr tongue. CAT me your address and they're yours.

Ds2 has a speech sound disorder and we have the Mr Tongue book. I can type it out for you if you think it would appeal to your son but Ds2 cannot begin to do any of it, although he has special needs so I don't think he really sees the point.

Some other suggestions - blowing and sucking - musical instruments can be fun, such as recorders and there are a whole variety of whistles etc that can be got here . Ds2 couldn't blow anything at first so it may take some perseverance.

Can he suck through a straw - those small cartons are good to start off with because you can squeeze juice up into his mouth to encourage him.

Placing dabs of honey/chocolate spread/jam around the child's mouth and encouraging them to lick it off - a mirror may help with this.

Licking a spoon coated with jam or something nice - hold it further away from the mouth and to the sides to encourage them to move their tongue.

Food to encourage the use of lip and tongue muscles includes breadsticks, apple, ice lollies, raw carrot and peanut butter on small crackers.

Alternate kissing and smiling at teddy or doll.

I have to say that I find it hard to get Ds2 who is also 4, to do a lot of these exercises but I don't know how much that is to do with him having special needs and how much is because he finds them hard and tries to avoid them.

sorry didn't see Baka's post when I posted about Mr Tongue.

It is the SN saker. DS1 has never done a single one of these exercises (not even licking up sweets- just picked them up ) but ds2 did them all, perfectly!

It's frustrating isn't it! and I noticed that after about 2 weeks the SALT just gave up trying to do anything he wasn't very co-operative with and mainly stuck to language work. Well he does need language work, but I am quite good at doing that with him myself whereas speech sounds is more specialised and I could use some extra help. I am hoping the SALT at his new school will be better as it would help him massively if more people could understand him.

how's his imitation skills? I personally think that's the key- work on imitation (including gross motor and with objects) and then they begin to "get" the speech sounds. DS1 actually says quite a lot now, but it's all so incomprehensible he's still described as non-verbal (and is- effectively!).

Thanks Baka and Saker!

I'll CAT you about Mr Tongue, Baka, thank you so much!

I am wondering how much co-operation I'll get from ds - I don't think that he's SN as such but he has an odd little personality (kind of asperger's like), which is generally negative, non-co-operative, and can be aggressive (hence lack of speech assessments and audiology checks by health professionals) - have to admit I had tears today when dh rang after the assessment, it just seems like one thing after another with ds at the moment..and I know that he seems AS but I'm sure it's the deafness and frustration and a large dose of 'scientists for parents' but then I see dd, so completely normal and I wonder) - we do seem to be entering a calmer time at the moment though, so fingers crossed.

Ok, off to find straws, bubble wands, candles etc!

(I'm so glad you feel able to start feeling positive about ds3, Baka )

His imitation skills are awful! I've always thought his motor skills were OK, gross are def. ok - very good climbing and balancing, and his pen control is good, and he fed himself from 10 months...but he can't copy actions to songs for example..and we tried Makaton when he really wasn't verbal (until his op.) and he just didn't get it...only realised how poor he was when I realised that dd was signing really well, and she's 2 yrs younger than him.

well he kind of pointed on xmas day - which was a very nice birthday/xams present, and his communication switch seems to be going on so, hopefully optimistic I am trying to be (yoda).

I think the deafness thing makes it hard. It can lead to odd behaviour, but is also used as an excuse by professionals not to investigate fully, but you sound on top of it all. The non-cooperation on ds1's part wasn't really to be awkward, he just had no iudea what was expected of him (and has very litte concept of copying- although its coming).

Anyway CAT me and Mr tongue is yours. Check out apraxia kids as well- I think its that site that has a bunch of kids with verbal dyspraxia/apraxia with recording of their speech. Although be warned their speech all sounds brilliant to me. I listend to that, decided ds2 definitely had verbal dyspraxia and then he sorted his speech out himself.

Incidentally if your son is dxed with verbal dyspraxia do pop into SN for some advice because you could then do with a statement to ensure that he gets SALT (an absolute necessity for verbal dyspraxia). I exchanged quite a few emails a few years ago with someone whose son had verbal dyspraxia and she gave me lots of tips. She did get a statementand her son was receiving a lot of SALT.

Just thought I'd mention it, but one of the reasons that they are worrying about mouth/lip/tongue control is because he drools.. he was constantly soaking wet before his operation, now he's just 'damp to a bit soggy' - it wasn't so bad when he could get away with bandanna bibs but not so good to have soggy school jumpers.

Do you have a paed assessment coming up bluebear? Imitation ability really affects speech (and everything else!) and lack of it should be assessed to be honest.

Sorry I'm going to have to dash off now for the rest of the night. But if imiation skills are poor I really would push for a proper assessment from someone who knows what they are doing (developmental paed for example). I can give you some great exercises to get going on imitation. You can do something like say "do this" and clap - then if your son doesn't do it you physically make him hand over hand, then reward "hey great" - and give whatever reward your son likes (chocolate buttons were used a lot in this house) then repeat the whole process.

Sorry I have to dash now, but will send Mr tongue asap.