Today we\u2019re going to focus on Phonological Disorders and how they can impact our kiddos\u2019 reading and spelling. Not everyone knows what a phonological disorder is, and, even if you are aware, you don\u2019t always realize the impact that it can have on reading and spelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A phonological disorder is a type of speech sound disorder where children have difficulty correctly saying their speech sounds. In other words, they\u2019re not saying their sounds correctly, but they\u2019re saying them in predictable ways that follow patterns known as phonological processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are some examples of common phonological processes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now – major note!!! – all kids will say sounds and words in error as they\u2019re learning to talk. I usually tell parents it\u2019s because they\u2019re making things easier for themselves as they learn what they\u2019re supposed to be doing with their mouth, tongue, throat, and lungs. We expect to see some of these as kids are getting things sorted out in their mind (and, frankly, it\u2019s adorable when a kid calls spaghetti, \u201csketti\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While all children make speech errors as they learn to talk, certain red flags indicate a phonological disorder:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small, but important sidebar: It\u2019s important to know that not all phonological processes are created equal. We don\u2019t need to dive into the specifics, but certain changes in speech (like eliminating the first sound in a word) is much more attention-grabbing to me as a speech pathologist than a kid calling a shoe a \u201ctoo,\u201d but otherwise learning his \u201csh\u201d sound in other \u201csh\u201d words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second sidebar: This is where it\u2019s hard to capture everything in a blog. All kids are different, and a lot of our kiddos have their own little one-offs that aren\u2019t always easy for a parent to decide if they should be concerned. If you\u2019re reading through this and are wondering, \u201cshould I be concerned?\u201d \u2013 just message us \u2013 if we can\u2019t help, we can point you in the direction of someone who can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that we have this small bit of new information, let\u2019s jump into why we care about phonological disorders and learning to read with a bit of background on me… In grad school, I was essentially taught that most kids with sounds in errors have straight articulation disorders. Think of kids calling rabbits \u201cwabbits\u201d or teachers \u201cteachuhs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The teaching I received was that kiddos with intense phonological disorders were few and far between. (Think of these as your kids that you cannot understand what they\u2019re saying because they\u2019re dropping syllables, changing sounds, or not saying every sound in a word.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, as someone obsessed with how kids learn to read and spell, I\u2019d argue that anytime a kiddo isn\u2019t saying their sounds right, we need to just assume it\u2019s a phonological disorder and treat it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s why: The same system we use for learning to listen and speak, is the same system we will later use to read and write<\/strong>. We know that kiddos who have a lot of sounds in error are at a higher risk of difficulty with phonological awareness* tasks (and we can then assume it will bleed into their reading and spelling), BUT kiddos with just a single sound in error can also see it impact their spelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (*Phonological awareness <\/strong>is simply being aware of the sounds in spoken language and then being able to recognize and manipulate and\/or play them. We deeply need this when learning to read and spell.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do I no longer think speech sound errors are \u201cjust artic?\u201d Because how did your kid\u2019s amazing brain develop the ability to produce these complex speech sounds just by listening, but didn\u2019t notice that we say \u201cchair\u201d instead of \u201cshare\u201d? If they figured alllll these other sounds out, but didn\u2019t notice a difference between \u201cch\u201d and \u201csh,\u201d it\u2019s not \u201cjust articulation\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s something in the phonological processing component of the brain that didn\u2019t get plugged in to the right spot. (This is just one example of an error we may hear in a kid\u2019s speech.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you think the word \u201cchair\u201d is pronounce \u201cshare,\u201d it\u2019s going to become tricky when you\u2019re learning about the digraphs \u201csh\u201d and \u201cch.\u201d If this student was able to discriminate (which just means tell the difference) between all the sounds in order to eventually start saying red instead of \u201cwed\u201d (along with learning all their other sounds), what was it about this kiddo\u2019s specific brain that was and is struggling to tell the difference between \u201csh\u201d and \u201cch?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When this happens, it is phonological in nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it\u2019s phonological in nature, I start to worry about reading and spelling because, again, it\u2019s the same system within the brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To make things more complicated, there\u2019s nothing natural or easy about reading and writing. It\u2019s an advance human idea that was laid upon our brains. Our brains were not<\/strong> wired and built to naturally acquire the ability to read and spell the way we naturally can acquire language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We expect most kids to learn how to correctly say all their speech sounds without help. If they struggled to do that \u2013 the natural part \u2013 we can image how complex it can become when we then start to ask them to use that part of their brain to learn and apply something that was not natural (reading and writing).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learning to read and write is laborious and intensive when done right and part of the massive problem we have as an education system is our inability to even do it kind of right.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy Phonological Errors Matter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Are you starting to see how this can then impact reading and spelling?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Challenge of Learning to Read and Write<\/h2>\n\n\n\n