Articulation Disorders
Targeted therapy for speech sound errors — helping children and adults speak more clearly and confidently.
What Are Articulation Disorders?
Articulation disorders occur when a person has difficulty producing speech sounds correctly. This can result in speech that is unclear, hard to understand, or sounds different from peers. While some sound errors are a normal part of development, others persist beyond the expected age and benefit from therapy.
Types of Articulation Errors
Substitutions
Replacing one sound with another (e.g., "wabbit" for "rabbit" or "thun" for "sun").
Omissions/Deletions
Leaving out a sound entirely (e.g., "cu" for "cup" or "nana" for "banana").
Distortions
Producing a sound in an unfamiliar way — such as a lateral lisp where air escapes over the sides of the tongue.
Additions
Adding an extra sound to a word (e.g., "buhlue" for "blue").
Common Sound Errors We Treat
Our Treatment Approach
Articulation therapy follows a systematic progression: we start by teaching the correct sound in isolation, then in syllables, words, sentences, and finally in conversation. For children, therapy is play-based and engaging. For adults, sessions focus on functional practice relevant to daily communication.
When articulation errors have a motor component, we may incorporate PROMPT therapy or oral placement techniques for more effective results.
Lisps are the sound error families ask about most, and not every lisp behaves the same way. Our guide to speech therapy for lisps explains the four lisp types, which ones children typically outgrow, how a tongue thrust pattern can keep a lisp in place, and what treatment involves at each stage.
The /r/ sound is the other error that most often outlasts the developmental window. Our guide to R sound speech therapy covers why /r/ is so hard to learn, the age by which most children have it, consonant versus vocalic /r/, and how the sound is shaped and stabilized in therapy.
/l/ is the third sound families ask about, and it behaves differently from both: it has a contact point you can see, and most children have it a full year before /r/. Our guide to L sound speech therapy explains the gliding pattern behind "yewo" and "wike," why light and dark /l/ are two separate targets, and what the research actually shows about tongue tie and the L sound.
The "th" sounds are the latest-arriving consonants in English, and the easiest to mistake for a lisp running in the other direction. Our guide to TH sound speech therapy covers the two separate TH sounds and their acquisition ages, the error types behind "fumb" and "dat," why dialect has to be established before anything is called an error, and why this is the one sound where the tongue belongs between the teeth.
"Sh" is rarely a single problem, because ch and j are built directly on top of it. Our guide to SH sound speech therapy covers the four sounds in this family and when each should arrive, the patterns behind "sip" for ship and "tair" for chair, how a slushy "sh" connects to a lateral lisp, and why tongue resting posture matters more here than it does for the TH sounds.
Not every speech sound error is an articulation error. When a whole class of sounds is being simplified by a pattern rather than one sound being made incorrectly, the diagnosis is usually a phonological disorder instead. Our comparison of phonological vs. articulation disorder explains how the two differ, how a speech-language pathologist tells them apart during an evaluation, and why each one calls for a different treatment approach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Concerned About Speech Clarity?
Schedule a free consultation to discuss your child's speech sounds or your own articulation goals.