More Wednesday Wins: Graduating from Speech

For this week's blog, speech therapist Erika Baldwin is sharing her "Wednesday Win!"

"My 'win' for this week is that one of my speech students was able to graduate from speech this year! When I first met her, she had an extremely prominent lateral lisp that distorted so many of her sounds, including /s/, "sh," /z/, "j," and "ch." It was really frustrating for her when people couldn't understand her as a result of this, and it was also affecting her social connections in school. I was not sure we'd be able to work through all of these sounds in one school year, but we were going to try our best!

Luckily, I took a continuing education course that changed my outlook on working with lateral lisps. You can learn more about it by reading a previous blog post that I wrote, What About That Lateral Lisp? | Sidekick Therapy Partners (mysidekicktherapy.com). The cognitive reframing involved in this treatment clicked with this student immediately! By the end of the school year, she was producing all of these sounds with 90% accuracy in conversation with her teachers and peers. Not only this, but she was more confident in her speech and performing in the top of her class! I was so proud of her for graduating speech this year and can't wait to see all that she will accomplish with her confident communication. Happy Wednesday!"