Voice Strategies for Children

Children with voice disorders are relatively rare.

And yet, voice is important. Children who are not comfortable with how they sound, or who do not know how to make sound without stress, tension, and pain, might have trouble holding conversations with their peers. They might even hesitate to speak up in class, because they are scared what will happen to their voice when it is their turn to talk.

Fortunately, there are ways to simplify the complex tips that are recommended in voice therapy, so that a child can understand and implement her strategies.

A bonus? Her teacher can learn about the strategies too!

THE MORE COMMON VOICE PROBLEMS IN CHILDREN

1. Talking too loudly

This child yells every time she wants to say something, and does not seem to understand the term “inside voices.” The child’s voice may become strained with time, and she might complain about throat pain even when she is not sick.

2. Talking with a raspy voice

There are “crackles” in this child’s voice. The voice might break at times – in a way that has nothing to do with puberty. A child with a raspy voice may “rasp” at the beginning of an utterance, before smoothing out. Or he may start fine, but then the rasp starts to kick in.

3. Talking too softly

This child whispers and mumbles, and you have to really lean in to hear what she is saying.

4. Talking at an inappropriate pitch

A child may speak too high or too soft. Of course, voice pitch varies among children. But this is for children whose voice’s are jarringly high or low, in a way that might bring on bullying in a few years.

5. Talking with a nasal voice

This child sounds like Karen Walker from Will and Grace, or Bart Simpson from The Simpsons. Things sound pinched… and a bit like the “nk” sound in the word “honk.”

So what’s an adult – especially an SLP – supposed to do when encountering these issues? Well, here are some strategies, corresponding to each problem.

1. Talking too loudly – use auditory feedback!

a. You can use the term “inside voices” and “outside voices” to demonstrate soft and loud vocal production. Then you can have the child talk. You can record the talking and point out points when the voice was inside, and points when the voice was outside.

b. When the child has grasped this, you can use an app on your phone which gives feedback about exactly how loud a voice is, with a precise dB number.

60 dB is appropriate for the human voice, so you can make a game of staying at 60 for as long as possible. If the sound meter goes up over 65 dB, you get a coin. If a child can go three minutes without giving you a coin, they win.

2. Talking with a raspy voice- start humming!

This is perhaps the closest problem to an adult voice disorder. And unfortunately, many kids will not understand or want to do the complex process that will truly correct a raspy voice.

However, we can start the process. We can tell kids that when they talk, they should sound like they are humming.

a. In most people, humming is an easy voice production, without strain or rasp.

You can practice humming along to favorite songs. Disney songs!

Once they have that down, you can add words.

“Mmmmmmmm world…. Mmmmmmm knew….” Would be how we would sing “A Whole New World” from Aladdin. Each word would have to sound as close to the hum as possible before moving on to the next level.

With time, you increase the number of words, and decrease the amount of humming.

b. For kids who don’t like humming or singing (gasp), you can use words that start with /m/. Only you can elongate the /m/ like you are humming.

For example… mmmmmmmmouse, mmmmmine.

3. Talking with a soft voice – it’s more than just breathing!

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t think that telling a child to breathe big will solve voice issues. This is because teaching a child breathing big so young might make talking seem more stressful than it already is. Also, many singers and adults with raspy voices got that way because of breathing a little too big.

If a child’s voice production is correct, then he/ she will automatically be more audible.

So what to do?

a. Work on increasing awareness of the problem.

Record the child in a classroom environment, maybe with a contrast with one other child, and have them listen to whether they can hear and understand their voice. Children are often shocked by how their voice sounds. They haven’t been paying too much attention to it, among the millions of other things they are learning.

With increased awareness comes increased understanding, and motivation to fix the problem

b. Teach correct technique- humming part 2

This is extremely important. We don’t want to teach a child to be louder in the wrong way – leading to raspiness (see above). So when asking children to increase their volume, ask them to hum…. And then increase the volume of their hums.

It’s really hard to “hum” incorrectly… so the volume would be increasing in a natural way.

You can use a sound app on your phone, and aim for ~55 dB on the hums. Then, once this is mastered, you can slowly introduce words, and try to bring the dB for words up.

4. Talking at an inappropriate pitch – “uh huh?”

The easiest tip to track pitch is to tell a child to say “uh huh?” like they are talking on the phone.

This is their natural pitch. Anything higher / lower is more effort.

You can use an app to track that frequency. Then, you can correct the child every time I feel like their voice is straying with natural pitch. You can do the correcting in games and conversational activities.

5. Talking with a nasal voice

A nasal voice happens when air is going in the nasal cavity instead of the oral cavity. So what I really like to work on with nasal kids is opening up the mouth, to bring more sound “down” from the nose.

You can use a mirror, and tell children to hold nice, open vowels like “ah” or “oh” and feel the sound in the back of the mouth, not the nose.

To make it fun, you can mix animal noises. For example, picking cards with sheep on them and then practicing saying “baa.” The person with the best “baaa” wins the game.

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Whew, that was a detailed topic! This was barely brushing the surface of voice disorders… but these strategies are pretty generalizable. You can teach / incorporate a strategy into any game or activity with minimal effort.

If you follow these techniques, rooted in evidence based practice, but adapted for little minds, you may see significant improvements in a short period of time.

Happy Talking!

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Disclaimer : Smarter Speech is a pediatric speech therapy / speech-language pathology practice for toddlers and children providing in-home and teletherapy services in and around Mountain View, CA and Los Gatos, CA. Smarter Speech Blog aims to provide free speech and language tips for parents educators and therapists. However, this post is not providing speech-language pathology services. This is general information, not speech -language pathology or speech therapy. This article does not assume or create a client – SLP relationship. The author is not liable for any losses or damages due to actions or failure to act based on the content in this article. If you need assistance with a child’s speech or language needs, please contact a speech-language pathologist in your area.