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ORAL PLACEMENT THERAPY – FOR SPEECH AND FEEDING

ORAL PLACEMENT THERAPY –  FOR SPEECH AND FEEDING

Oral–motor is a term that is still widely used in our speech systems. The use of oral motor exercises in a feeding program has never been debated in our field. For example, the feeding activities.

Children with different special need categories cannot imitate targeted speech sounds using auditory and visual stimuli (i.e., “Look, listen, and say what I say”). They also cannot follow specific instructions to produce targeted speech sounds (e.g., “Put your lips together and say m”).

Oral Placement Therapy (OPT) is a tactile teaching technique used for children and adults with Oral Placement Disorders, who cannot learn standard speech sound production using auditory and visual teaching methods alone.

It is based on a common sequence

1. Facilitate speech movement with the assistance of a therapy tool (ex. Talk Tools® Bite Block, horn, tongue depressor) or a tactile-kinesthetic facilitation technique (ex. PROMPT facial cue);
2. Facilitate speech movement without the therapy tool and/or tactile-kinesthetic technique (cue fading);
3. Immediately transition movement into speech with and without therapy tools and/or tactile-kinesthetic techniques.

Oral Placement Therapy works only on movements needed for speech clarity.  OPT facilitates the pre-requisite skills in muscle control to develop dissociation and grading in the muscles of the abdomen, velum, jaw, lips and tongue for clients who cannot approximate the standard speech sounds using the instructions.

If the client can produce standard speech using adequate placement and duration using only auditory and visual cueing, OPT would not be included in that client’s program plan.

At Jeevaniyam, the Speech Language Pathologist, focus on OPT along with conventional Speech Therapy. The therapy program for each child is tailor-made based on the child’s speech and language requirements.