Helping Students Who Are Orally Defensive in Speech Therapy

I was working with a group of students last week and I wanted to help them grasp proper tongue placement for /s/. I pulled out the mirrors, tongue depressors, and toothettes when all of a sudden one second grader flipped out. With his hand covering his mouth he pushed himself away from the table and expressed with terror in his voice, "I don't like things in my mouth!" Okay," I responded, "no worries we don't have to use these." He remained fearful even with reassurance that I wouldn't come anywhere near him with the toothette. His peers on the other hand, were eager to use the cherry flavored tongue depressors. That session was lost for him and yet I still needed to help him understand tongue placement. I have a Super Duper Jumbo mighty Mouth Hand Puppet, but I wanted him to have a more personalized experience.

In the car on my way home (where all my ideas/thoughts happen) I decided that in order to have him develop comfort with his own mouth, he had to make one and not just a paper mouth, but a mouth where he could move the tongue. I've seen mouth craftivities with mini marshmallow teeth, but I wanted this one to be used more than once. I also didn't want to spend too much money as lately I've been a little too spendy. I ordered 1/4 inch white pom poms to be used as teeth and found pink baby socks at Walmart. I bought the 0-6 month size. I made a mouth template from card stock that the students traced on pink paper with a small rectangle where the sock tongue would be glued. Unfortunately, the pom poms didn't arrive in time, so we used crumpled tissue paper for teeth. I wish I had thought of that before I bought the pom poms!  I struggled stapling the tongue in when it occurred to me to use hot glue. I also trimmed about two inches of the sock cuff off, so there wasn't excess sock.

My little ones placed their fingers in the sock and moved it all around their mouths. They used tongue depressors and toothettes to touch all around the teeth and tongue. My colleague from our PK had a great idea to add some texture to the alveolar ridge I had drawn on. I think I'll outline it with white glue and sprinkle sand, glitter or salt on top. I'd like them to understand that the alveolar ridge is bumpy.

Years ago, I worked with twins one of whom was very orally defensive. His parents were at their wits end, because he was having considerable dental problems, yet they couldn't get him to the dentist. We are fortunate to have a dental program in our school whereby a dental hygienist comes and cleans students' teeth.  They asked for help so I ordered some dental tools. Never fear, they were never placed in the student's mouth, they were simply to desensitize him to the tools. He used them on the Jumbo Mighty Mouth and used the mirror tool to look in my mouth. It worked like a charm.

I'm fairly certain it's going to take repeated exposure "playing" with these mouths before this particular student becomes more at ease. It may never happen, in fact, but at least he will have  a greater awareness of his tongue in his mouth and will be less anxious when I pull out tongue depressors for use with his peers.

One last picture. I was able to find some white pom poms in my big ole bucket of pom poms, so one student glued them on his mouth as teeth. I actually think I like the look of the crumpled tissue paper better, plus there was no drying time because we used glue sticks.

Any other suggestions? How do you help your students with oral defensiveness? I am open to any and all suggestions!