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Oral Placement Therapy for Children and Adults
Will help in muscle-based speech and feeding deficits including Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, apraxia, autism spectrum, persistent articulation disorders, and numerous other muscle-based disorders
What is Oral Motor Therapy?

Nancy Sandoval is like lots of kids with Down syndrome. She can talk a blue streak, but few outside her immediate family can understand what she is saying. And even they have difficulty sometimes. Like many youngsters with low-tone muscle deficits, Nancy's oral muscles are not adequately developed to produce sounds clearly. But it doesn't have to be that way. In most cases these children can be taught to speak more clearly, but not with traditional speech therapy alone.
Read more: What is Oral Motor Therapy? (18.7 kb, PDF)

Horns as a Therapy

If horns had not been invented by ancient civilizations, surely modern day speech therapists would have had to invent them. From didgeridoos to trumpets, the controlled use of wind for the production of phrased sound anticipates oralmotor therapy (OMT) in more than tidy, metaphoric allusion. To some it is hard to believe that a simple toy horn could be other than a plaything, but in the realm of speech and language practitioners small, unsophisticated horns are effective therapy tools. This article will address how these devices can be used to correct articulation disorders, deal with deficits in phonation or breath control, work with cleft palate repairs, teach velopharyngeal functions and improve speech clarity.
Read more: Horns as a Therapy (54.1 kb, PDF)

Straws as a Therapy

Filmwriters and novelists know that one quick path into a storyline is through the reliable dramatic tool: food. Oral motor therapists are no different. This article is the first of a two-part series that explores the use of simple tools to facilitate therapy for a variety of speech disorders. The first tool - straws - can be used by many clients. The primary goal of the use of straws is to address insufficient tongue retraction. This treatment encourages increased speech clarity whether the client has an inter-dental lisp or other varieties of phoneme distortions. Therapeutic straws have also been found to be useful when working with velo-pharyngeal insufficiency or a client that is recovering from a cerebral vascular accident (CVA). In these instances and numerous others, specially gradated straws are used in a hierarchical succession to work on a specific component of oral movement.
Read more: Straws as a Therapy (54.8 kb, PDF)

The Oral Motor Myths of Down Syndrome

There is a visual impression that each of us holds in our mind when we think of a child or adult with Down Syndrome. As a Speech Pathologist in private practice for twenty-five years and as a continuing education instructor for speech and language pathology classes on Oral Motor Therapy, I have learned that this impression is a powerful teaching aid.
Read more: The Oral Motor Myths of Down Syndrome (51.3 kb, PDF)

For other related articles, please browse below:
Evidence Based & Peer Reviewed Articles

Currently evidence-based practices and research are being carried out to validate the use of TalkTools Therapy.

"Our unique methods of oral-placement therapy have proven effective for clients with oral-motor deficits in therapeutic settings and we are excited to begin clinical trials to validate those results. We are working with researchers to provide practitioners and families with evidence-based therapeutic methods to address oral-motor aspects of speech, sensory and feeding deficits. Several research projects are underway addressing various aspects of TalkTools Therapy™ techniques, tools and methodologies. Our research interests are to make our findings available and subject our findings to peer review. We are collaborating with other professionals to expand our knowledge of oral-motor applications for sensory, feeding and speech development."
-TalkTools® Innovative Therapists International
Directory Of Therapists

List of Therapists in Singapore and Asia who have attended the following Workshops organised by Therapy Resources:
Please note that Therapy Resources does not endorse or recommend any therapist in the above lists. It is provided for information only.

Upon request, we are also able to furnish you contact details of other therapists from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand, who have attended all our Workshops to date. Kindly write directly to us at info@therapy-resources.com for more information.


Not sure what you can do to help you child start on this therapy? Buy the "TalkTools™ Parent Kit: Using Oral Placement Therapy With Your Child". Each set of items in this kit comes with complete instructions to help you get started.
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