Nasal Speech

When your baby first starts to speak, it is a joyous miracle to hear real words that mean something. Most children will develop speech naturally as they hear words and sentences from the family members and friends. Some children will have more problems than others. If words and sentences do not develop, this could be a language development problem. This is usually addressed by speech therapy but sometimes it is good to look for any other problems that could be contributing. These could be hearing problems or learning difficulties. If the words are coming but are poorly understood this is a speech problem. Usually it is related to articulation – putting the sounds in the mouth in the right place. Many sounds will develop in the child at specific ages. Every child is a little different and one child could be behind one of his brothers or sisters. If there seems to be a real problem, the child should be evaluated by a speech pathologist. This service is often available at the local school.

Sometimes the speech sounds “nasally”. This could be a stuffy nose sound, like there is a constant cold. This could be from allergy, infections in the nose, enlarged adenoids, or other structural problems with the nose. This could be evaluated by your ENT doctor. Fortunately this problem usually does not make the speech hard to understand.
If the sounds come out of the nose instead of the mouth in speech (hypernasal speech) there could be a bigger problem. Most of the time this could be corrected by getting the articulation right- a job that the speech therapist can do. Sometimes the palate is not built right and cannot close off the back of the nose for speech sounds. In those cases the speech needs to be evaluated by the Pediatric ENT specialist and a speech pathologist team. You might also see food or drink coming out of the nose when eating.