Thomas

Thomas was referred to me as a high priority case. At four, hardly a word he said was comprehensible, other than to his mother. And she did not understand much of what he said. Broadly, there were three sorts of things happening in his speech.

• Doubling syllables and losing any syllable before the stressed syllable, as in chocolate as CHOCHOCK, donkey as DODONG, plastic as PLAPLACK, Christmas as CHINCHIN, umbrella as BEBE;
• Replacing initial consonants by H (if there is one) and the first consonant in a second syllable by W or Y as in finger as HEEYING, sausages as HOWOSH, soldier as HOHWOOV (OO as in good), scissors as HEEYERZ, animal as AYIOO;
• Assimilating consonants to stops with the lips, switching them around, and losing structure, as in hospital as HOFFTU and later HOBIBU, button as BUBON, monkey as MUMI, porcupine as PAWBA IE (with a glottal stop in the space), bottle as BOBOH, animal as AMMU, cardigan as KAHGENG.

But in all of these pronunciations, the syllables have internal structure.

He was treated by an early version of Possible Words Therapy once a week as much as possible, and then when the family moved away once every six weeks or two months. But despite his obvious priority he only had twelve and a half hours of therapy. But he still made stready progress. At five and a half he was mostly understandable, but still with many immature incompetences such as animal as AMAMU. Then over a period of three months without treatment, the immaturities disappeared, and his speech as age appropriate.