How to Say /s/ and /z/ (Frontal and Lateral Lisp)

If your “soup” is turning into “thoop” and your “zippers” are “thippers”, you may have a frontal lisp.

My article on fixing lateral lisps has received a lot of traffic and I’ve had many requests for a similar article on frontal lisps, so here goes!

What Is a Frontal Lisp?

Let’s start at the beginning. A frontal lisp, also known as an interdental lisp, occurs when a child says the /s/ and /z/ sounds with the tongue pushed too far forward. This causes /s/ and /z/ to sound more like “th”. Frontal lisps are sometimes caused by tongue thrust, which is when the tongue is consistently too far forward, including during swallowing and at rest (when the tongue is not doing anything at all). Not all frontal lisps are caused by tongue thrust but some are. Tongue thrust requires additional types of therapy that are not discussed in this article. Today’s article will just focus on treatment for a plain old frontal lisp.

How Do You Treat Frontal Lisp?

I’m so glad you asked! :-) Frontal lisp therapy can be broken down into six steps.

Step One: Assessment

The first thing you will need to do for frontal lisp therapy is to assess the lisp. You don’t need any standardized tests for this, you just need a lot of words for the child to say so you can evaluate which sounds have the lisp and which ones don’t. I recommend you test both the /s/ and /z/ in all word positions. This means testing when the sound is at the beginning, middle, and end of the word as well as in consonant clusters (blends) at both the beginning and end of the word. Simply have the child say words with the sounds in all of those different positions. If the child can read, just have him read word lists. If the child cannot read, you can have him label pictures that represent the words. Below are my word lists for /s/ and /z/ in all positions, or you can download my articulation cards which contain pictures of /s/ and /z/ words in the initial, medial, and final position as well as /s/ blends in the initial position of words. Just write down which words the child can say correctly and which words are lisped.

Visit the original post to download the /s/ and /z/ Artic Cards and Worksheets for Free - https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com....

Initial /s/

*Say
*See
*Siren
*Soap
*Soup
*Second
*Simple
*Sock
*Sad
*Soot
*Sun
*Sound
*Soy

Medial /s/....to find out more, click here to read the entire post: https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com....