Speech Therapy

What is Oral Placement Therapy

What is Oral Placement Therapy (OPT) and Why is it Important for Individuals with the Diagnosis of Down Syndrome?

By Renee Roy Hill MS, CCC/SLP

Acknowledgements: Feedback provided by and incorporated from Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson, MS, CCC-SLP and Diane Bahr, MS, CCC-SLP

Ella before OPT Therapy

Ella after OPT Therapy

Oral Placement Therapy (OPT, a new term coined by Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson of TalkTools Therapy ) is a type of oral-motor therapy used by Speech-Language Pathologists (SLP) to target specific movements needed for speech clarity and feeding. It is one aspect of an oral motor therapy program that addresses the motor components used in feeding and speech. Oral motor therapy (OMT) can be used with a variety of clients including those with Down syndrome.

When a client has no speech, very little speech or speech that is difficult to understand, it is the job the the SLP to determine why he or she is having difficulty. In a traditional speech therapy evaluation, the therapist commonly assesses the client’s speech and language skills through observation and formal assessment. Speech clarity is often assessed by listening to the client, determining what speech sounds or groups of sounds the client may not use appropriately. The client may not be using any words at all. In that case the therapist uses strategies to stimulate speech sound imitation. Some clients produce a wide variety of isolated sounds but are unable to put them together to formulate intelligible words. For some of these clients the SLP can use traditional therapies (I will refer to these as “Watch me, listen to me, and do what I do” techniques) using visual (watch me) and auditory (listen to me) modeling to target their speech sound errors. However, there are a number of children who do not respond to these typical visual and auditory treatment techniques. For example, children with Down syndrome tend to have a combination of muscle function, motor planning and auditory concerns that preclude a positive response to such strategies.

The Oral-Motor Myths of Down Syndrome

The Oral-Motor Myths of Down Syndrome

By Sara-Rosenfeld-Johnson, M.S., CCC-SLP

Published in ADVANCE Magazine August 4, 1997

There is a visual impression that each of us holds in our mind when we think of a child or adult with Down syndrome. As a Speech Pathologist in private practice for twenty-five years and as a continuing education instructor for speech and language pathology classes on Oral-Motor Therapy, I have learned that this impression is a powerful teaching aid. When I teach, I ask the participants to tell me what they consider to be the characteristics of a Down syndrome child, or any low-tone child from an oral-motor pint of view; without fail I get the same responses. Their portrayals have become so predictable I have come to refer to them as the “Myths of Down syndrome”. This is what these professionals see: a high narrow palatal vault, (Myth # 1), tongue protrusion (#2), mild to moderate conductive hearing loss (#3), chronic upper respiratory infections (#4), mouth breathing (#5), habitual open mouth posture (#6), and finally, the impression that the child’s tongue is too big for its mouth (#7).

These seven structural/functional disorders have been plausibly associated with Down syndrome, so why label them myths? Because the children my associates and I have worked with over the past fifteen years no longer exhibit these characteristics. The therapeutic community has inadvertently allowed these myths to flourish because we didn’t recognize that they could be prevented. These abnormalities emerge in most children by the time they enter early-intervention programs. What has been missing in our treatment that has allowed them to develop? How do we pursue prevention?

Read the full article of The Oral Motor Myths of Down Syndrome

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Renee Hill

Renee Roy Hill, MS, CCC-SLP
is a TalkTools Therapy Level 6 Instructor,
Speech-Language Pathologist,
Oral Placement Speech and Feeding Specialist,
Owner of Crossroads Therapy Clinic, LLC