The brain is one very complex organ with messages traveling to and from the brain and other body parts at every moment. Messages received throughout our body, such as touch, temperature, or pain, have to travel to our brain to be processed before we move our arm away from a hot stove, for example. Along those same lines, we can coordinate movements by practicing them over and over again which strengthens the pathways carrying those messages. The ballet seen on stage was not in unison or performed with perfect technique the very first time the dancers learned the combinations. Typically, with practice, our muscles can change the way they move. This applies with the muscles used for speech, as well.
Like dance, sometimes we have to teach our muscles how and where to move in order to strengthen those pathways from our brain to our tongue, lips, cheeks, and jaw in order to produce speech. It is most difficult to remediate speech errors when they have been occurring for a long time because the pathway to and from the brain is not strong yet. This is why early intervention and articulation drills (aka “speech homework” and repeating the same sounds) help to retrain the muscles used for speech, strengthening those pathways. A little phrase that we like to follow is “use it to improve it”; the more we use our best speech sounds, our muscles will remember how to produce them that way, so speech will improve. Afterall, that’s the goal of speech therapy!
Stay tuned for more on this topic in future blogs, but if you have any questions in the meantime feel free to reach out we would love to hear from you!
– Lauren-