My client can say the R sound. Why not all the time?
- Susan Haseley MS CCC-SLP
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Speech Pathologists express this concern, especially regarding the vocalic R. The short answer concerns the motor coordination of the tongue, lips, and jaw.
Things you may begin to notice about your client.
1. Their “good R” isn’t really a “good R”.
Often, when an SLP reports that the client can say the R sound in one place in the word but not in others, we soon discover that the R is pretty airy. I get to be this speech pathologist. As a new clinician, I cheered on some pretty lousy R sounds. The Rs that were prolonged with lots of gargle sounds. So far from correct.
I discovered it once we tried the same word in a sentence. Yikes. The client had to stop to get ready for the noise, the movement, and…the gargle. I realized that my student was not producing the R sound correctly. At all.
2. Vowel sounds are slightly distorted.
Paying attention to sounds became my hobby. I noticed vowel sounds by watching a television show about a couple who flipped houses. The couple was genuinely nice. I started being bothered by the way the wife said, “good.” It sounded more like “guhd” to me. I watched her lips, her jaw, and then listened to more vowel sounds. She was able to be understood. But there were those vowels. All of them are a bit more lax than they should be.
Once I became aware of vowels, I wondered if I needed to go back and teach vowels. I asked all the usual Van Riper questions. Did the vowels call attention to themselves? Did they cause concern for the speaker or listener? I decided the vowels weren’t the problem; they were the symptom.
What I was hearing was a lack of tension, the same tension needed to create a perfect R sound, the clear S sound, and a noisy sh sound.
3. Lips, Lips, Lips
Remember the tension I mentioned with the vowels. Lips need to be tense, but pushed out slightly. All of the literature uses the terminology of “rounded lips.” We have all taken that phrase to mean that the lips are shaped like “oh” or “w”. In reality, the lips move away from the teeth. The side view of the mouth moving shows the lips pushing out quickly in conversation.
Early in therapy, I use a lip position I call "square lips" to help stabilize and tense the lips and jaw, which, in turn, helps the tongue anchor on the upper back molars. The position aids in tongue tension, but also provides enough stability for the tongue to make the movements for R and other vowel sounds!
Early in my career, I used to teach clients to retract their tongues by asking them to smile, and it worked! …until it didn’t work. When we teach lip retraction for tongue retraction, we teach the child that their lips “are in charge.” Resulting in the child moving the lips forward for the O sounds, like in the word rope. Ultimately, the child will then produce a w for r in those words because the lips are forward. Smiling for retraction doesn’t work.
4. The jaw has limited stability
Often, we will see a child's face with a distorted R sound: the chin is flat, the lips are relaxed, and the jaw is open. The flat chin, relaxed lips, and open jaw create an R that sounds more like an “uh” or noisy “uh.”
The jaw needs to be more closed for the R sound. The jaw was not even a consideration of ours when we began teaching the R sound. Now, the jaw position is integral to a successful R sound.
Our OT friends tell us that muscle stability equals muscle mobility. This motto will help us think about the R sound. We need all the muscles to be in position, stable, and tense to create the perfect R sound, and it needs to happen repeatedly. That is why we use the Bite-R with every R sound we teach. The client feels the position and tension and can replicate the movements every time they choose.
How do we help our clients?
We recommend using the Bite-R for several reasons.
We created the Bite-R to instill tongue tension. Once the client was able to achieve tongue tension, the quality of all their sounds improved. They sounded better in general.
The Bite-R allows the child to experience the sensation of tongue movement, position, and tension. Once the client experiences the R sound, they are willing and happy to try to replicate the position.
Once the child begins to self-monitor their mouth movements, they are better able to discern the accuracy of their own production and begin to self-correct! One of our students began to self-correct after the first session!
Most students need to spend time on establishing the R sound in a single position. We recommend that the position be established and used on high-frequency words. Our students will likely say the words presented on the very same day they learn the Bite-R position.
For our students, several interesting things happen with sufficient regularity that we believe they are part of the program.
The students will improve between sessions with no homework given. In fact, we discourage homework.
The student usually begins self-monitoring in the first or second session and begins self-correcting within the next few sessions. Often, the students will produce a word and shake their heads to reject the R sound WITHOUT looking at the speech pathologist to see if they were correct.
When students mispronounce the R, they can determine which part caused the error: lips, jaw, or tongue.
