217. Asthma & Speech Sound Disorders: The Connection That Changes Everything

In this episode, I'm digging into the connection between asthma and speech sound disorders. I'm going to be transparent about where the research ends, what I'm seeing on my own back porch, and what we can do differently when our standard approaches just aren't working. What I cover in this episode... →What a 2016 Northwestern study of over 330,000 children revealed about the asthma and speech sound disorder connection, and why children with severe asthma were up to 12 times more likely to have an SSD →Why I'm seeing stopping, fronting, and voicing errors that look like phonological processes but are only showing up at 0% accuracy in the initial position of words, while medial and final positions are at 100% →My hypothesis on why this is happening: insufficient subglottal air pressure, and what the physiology of voicing and airflow actually tells us →Why the /h/ sound, which is the easiest phoneme in our language, is being deleted at word onset by these children →What to look for from the child: mouth breathing, chin jutting, forward head posture, effortful speech, and seasonal fluctuations tied to allergy season →How I'm doing something different in treatment: using the child's postvocalic success to build a bridge into initial position production through vowel priming, end-to-beginning chaining, and gradual pause expansion You might be seeing this on your caseload if... ✓A child has strong medial and final accuracy but stays stuck at 0% in the initial position despite your best intervention ✓Speech takes a nosedive in fall or spring and improves when asthma is better controlled ✓A child can produce later-developing sounds, but is deleting /h/ at word onset ✓You're noticing mouth breathing, chin jutting, forward head posture, or visible effort and tension when the child speaks ✓You're doing all the right things, DTTC, complexity approach, multimodal cueing, and initial position still isn't moving 00:00 Asthma Meets SSDs 00:57 Why This Matters 02:19 What Research Shows 03:09 Where Research Stops 04:16 Initial Position Mystery 05:20 Stopping Only Initially 07:17 Air Pressure Hypothesis 09:41 Fronting and Voicing Clues 15:40 H Deletion and Fluctuations 22:21 Do Something Different This is where the practitioner begins. The research gives us a foundation, but when our children dare disturb the universe and break the rules of typical speech development, that is our signal to study what's happening right in front of us and do something different. I want to hear what you're seeing on your back porch. Send me an email and let's talk about it. Ready to put research into practice? Join the SIS Membership and start applying what you're learning today with the tools, resources, and community to back you up: https://www.kellyvess.com/sis This is where we roll up our sleeves together. Stop going it alone on the hard cases and get access to the strategies, frameworks, and support that help you become the shiniest version of yourself as a clinician. See you at the intervention drawing board,💚Kelly