Phonological processes are patterns of errors that are considered age appropriate for a period of time as children develop speech and articulation skills. Once a child has reached a certain age, these patterns are no longer considered age appropriate or "normal". When this happens, you can work with your child at home on these and you can also consider having them evaluated and treated by a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP). You can read more about phonological processes here.
One type of phonological process is voicing (or vocalization). This occurs when a child turns their voice on when it should be off (example: using a "B" sound in place of a "P" sound. "I want bobcorn" instead of "I want popcorn"). Another type of phonological process is devoicing. This occurs when a child turns their voice off when it should be on (example "the dog is pig" instead of "the dog is big").
There are a couple of ways to work on this process: you could treat whichever sound/phoneme is being pronounced incorrectly by itself. You could also use minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are words that are nearly identical, with the exception of the sounds you need the child to target or hear. Sometimes children can distinctly hear the difference between errors in other people, but not in themselves. This may cause them to get frustrated. If this happens, I encourage parents and providers to make therapy and practice as fun as possible.
Here is a list of minimal pairs you might use for either voicing or devoicing for phonemes /P/ and /B/:
Pea Bee Pie Bye Pay Bay Peg Beg Pig Big Peach Beach Patch Batch Park Bark Pack Back Pest Best Pear Bear Punch Bunch
I've created a game on Boom Learning that allows children to practice listening to the difference between these sounds. They can interact with a parent or therapist while they play...or they can have the audio automatically play while they have fun feeding pictures of target words to Gusgus the dog. You can preview the game by clicking on the image below.
Now I will provide some tips and tricks for targeting /P/ and /B/ separately. This is something you can work on with your child at home (and in therapy with a qualified speech provider).
1) First...get the lips into position.
2) show them and tell them how to turn their voice on or off. If they have a hard time, keep practicing, use a mirror for lip placement, let them feel your neck or their neck for the voice vibration, and be patient.
3) If they are voicing a /P/ sound by mistake, you could have them try it in a whisper to turn their voice off.
Beginning Words (Initial Position)
- pig, pizza, pool, P, paint, panda, pen, pencil, peek, pants, penny, pets, party, pickle, pictures, puzzle, peach, pot, pie, pear
- ball, bear, book, bat, big, boy, bubble, bed, B, bath, bite, bird, box, buzzer, bake, bags, backpack, bowl, bananas, boat
Middle Words (Medial Position)
- puppies, paper, happy, popcorn, pepper, purple, apple, popsicle, puppet, backpack, paperclip, pepperoni, teapot, hippo, pumpkin, pineapple, sleepy, superhero, cupcake, grapes
- rubber, bubble, wobble, gobble, teddy bear, gumballs, birdbath, baby, sandbox, toolbox, mailbox, bookbag, sailboat, basketball, table, rabbit, rainbow, blueberry, hamburger, tuba
Ending Words (Final Position)
- pup, cup, top, stop, pop, up, soap, raindrop, jump, nap, drop, soup, chip, tape, sheep, mop, dump, zip, hoop, hop
- tub, dab, globe, tab, cab, tube, web, crab, bulb, scrub, bib, cob, lab, sob, cub, rub, sub, robe, cube, earlobe
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