Causes of Articulation Disorders

There are many reasons why a child may have an articulation disorder. Some of these reasons are:

  • The child may have had intermittent hearing loss issues when they were little. They may for instance have had an extended period of time with hearing loss when their sounds were developing.
  • The child had incorrect sound production that was not corrected by an adult as it occurred. Often incorrect production is sometimes considered ‘cute’.
  • Structural differences, e.g. cleft palate or child’s dentition may not be aligned correctly.
  • Neurological issues, e.g. cerebral palsey where the child may have very tight muscles and hence cause a delay in their articulation development.

There are four types of Articulation Disorders.

The four types of articulation disorder are:

  • Substitution: this is where a child substitutes one sound for another sound, e.g the word ‘soap’ may be produced as ‘doap’.
  • Omission: is where a child deletes a sound altogether, e.g. ‘soap’ may be produced as ‘oap’.
  • Distortion: is where the child attempts to say sounds but the sounds are unclear.
  • Addition: is where the child adds in an extra sound, e.g. ‘glue’ may be produced ‘galued’.