Rock the R: Practical Strategies for Tackling the /r/ Sound
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Transcript of “Rock the R: Practical Strategies for Tackling the /r/ Sound with Lindsey Hockel” – Bright Conversations Podcast
How are you doing this morning? Thank you. I'm good. Just waiting for the coffee to kick in and even now. I am drinking Red Bull as we speak.
So if our audience is not familiar with all of the amazing work Lindsey is doing, she is an SLP that specializes in speech sound disorders and has extensive experience helping children master the R sound, which we all know is super tricky. So this should be a great episode today. She's going to share with us some evidence-based strategies, how we can use bio feedback and some student self-rating techniques to empower students in their own learning. And she's also the founder of Rock the R. So go find her on Instagram and all of that good stuff.
And she is dedicated to helping SLPs and families just crush that R sound. So I think we should probably start off. Why is that R sound so dang tricky? I love that question, but also there's not just one answer. I feel like a lot of it has to do with the absolute gymnastics that our tongue has to do to say it R because we have to, you know, we think about like tongue jaw dissociation, but it's not just that it's also dissociating different parts of your tongue.
So I'd have to go up. It pulls back. Tick goes up. Middle goes down. And there's just a lot happening.
And that's hard for kids to coordinate. Well, and did you learn how to crush the R on your own? Did you take a course? Did you learn in grad school? What was your kind of journey to get getting to a place where it became something you could kind of break down and help kids because I know a lot of kids and a lot of speech paths out there, especially working in the school that R is something that is on every SLPs load and we'd hear a lot of, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
So it's kind of funny. My very first client ever as a clinical fellow, I was in a clinic, was an R kid . And I was never able to help that kid. Like, I feel like he, it was kind of strange. I could have sworn he got it one day and then the next session it was gone.
So who knows if he ever really had it or if I was just wishful thinking, you start to feel kind of crazy after a while listening to the R. But I think that sort of set me on this trajectory of like, I don't ever want to feel like that again. I don't want my clients to feel like that. So I have just tried to learn as much as I can and study as much as I can and one thing led to another. And now it's all that I do.
I think I had kind of a similar journey because I was working in elementary school and I was one of those SLPs that did not think I would ever work in a school. I thought I was going to be in a hospital working with adults. And then I get these kids on my caseload and so many had that as a goal. And honestly, I mean, I graduated a very, very, very, very long time ago. But I, the only experience I had with correcting articulation was in the clinic .
I can remember an SH kid, but it was just kind of like, there was a lot of just kind of figure it out sort of stuff. And that was overwhelming when it came to R, but it was that same exact feeling of I got so tired of not knowing what to do. And I felt like a fraud and I felt like the more like worse the kids knew I was a fraud come in and they were just like miserable to come in. And so I kind of had that journey to where I was like, I don't want to feel like that. Let me figure this thing out.
Um, so what I was going to say, like, I think that's such a common experience and all of us, including myself, sometimes still, I feel that imposter syndrome. Um, but I think I was going to say that's the other side of why I think R is so hard. It's such a, a mental game too of just persevering through the challenges and trusting that you can and we'll find it, just keep adapting to that student to see what's going to finally click. Well, in having those kids too, if you are either have been working with that kid, if you're the only provider and aren't quite sure about R, or you've inherited kids, students from other people that weren't quite sure how to teach that R, they are kind of at their widths and too. They just feel like it's futile like my time coming here to not ever be able to say it.
So it is, it is a tricky spot to be in. Yes. Um, do you have kind of go to techniques when you are trying to elicit R? Where do you start even with, um, when you have a student that is the first time they sit in front of you and you want to fix that R? Okay.
I'm going to try to narrow this down because I, I, I have and continue to teach about elicitation for like, I like, I have a two hour course just on elicitation. So I'm going to try to really boil this down about 60 seconds. So let's go. Okay. So, um, the biggest way I like to frame it in my mind is that one, the R exists on a spectrum.
So it's not, don't think of it as like, okay, that was wrong. That was wrong. And, uh, just think of every quote unquote failed attempt as wrong. Try to remember that we're shaping approximations until finally it enters that range where it's a correct R. So when I picture R as on a spectrum and I think about improving approximations all of a sudden that's much more motivating to me and to my student because I talked to them about this, right?
And from there, we're layering cues and we're just like finding combinations to get them closer and closer. So those cues might be figuring out what context sounds best for them. Like if there's a particular word or I feel like for a lot of my kids, um, if I can find a word that has an "ah" in it, that's really helpful. Ah, promotes tongue root retraction, um, that also promotes some getting elevation in the back of the tongue. And when we're here going, like, ah, like, ah, like, ah, I like, not from Boston or what is it?
Like, give me a word that I would be a good one to maybe just start with, because that is true. Like if I say, ah, right now I can feel my tongue go up and back, which is what we want for R. So using those kind of facilitative context, what would be like a couple of words. Ah, so I can't help myself. One of my favorites is Carla, but I know that doesn't work for international people.
So an alternative could be T. rex. I really love that for elicitation, eerie, um, again, not internationally friendly, but for the Americans and Canadians, you can try "sure" because the SH gets lateral bracing. So the sides of the tongue going up on the molars. So all you have to do is like turn your voice on, pull your tongue back, sure.
Yes. It's funny. Like, as you're saying, all of these, I'm doing it. Yeah. And I feel that is a lot of articulation therapy, I think, too, is you are trying to do what they are doing and then give them the correct cue and move their tongue to the right spot.
So having some of these tricks in your wheelhouse to find maybe if they can already do it in some context and build upon that, or if they can't, starting in those places that give you some of that placement, like you said, the bracing of the tongue for sh or the retraction and awe. So what if it was like a Shaward Shaw, I don't know, and I guess for Pre-Vocal ic versus Vocalic R, do you see with the kids that you're working with, do they tend to get one more easily than the other or what really is the difference between those two sounds? I love that question because I, one of the most common DMs I get from SLPs is like, where do you start? And I think it's different for every kid. So what I would recommend is that every student that comes into your room, do some kind of our screener or just like poke around different contexts and see what they sound closest with.
Okay. So let's go with that. So if they sound best saying the word green, then play around with green for a little while and see if you can't get that to be shaped closer and closer to a correct R. So you just yeah, there's not a one right answer for that. And then I know that the big terms for R are either using a bunch R or retro flex production.
So what am I looking for when I am, is this during that facilitative process where I'm just doing the screener and having them try some different ways to do it? So what's funny about that is there's actually research to suggest it's not that simple. So I used to be so fixated on that like binary bunch R retroflex, but I think that because the R is on a spectrum and because everyone's tongue and anatomy is so different and there's so much fine tuning that goes on with time placement. Don't worry so much about bunch R retroflex. Just cues work for either from my experience, kids have the most trouble with lateral bracing, so getting the sides of the tongue up inside the top molars and tongue root ret raction.
Both of those things are needed for an R no matter what the tongue tip is doing between a bunch and a retroflex, the biggest difference is the tongue tip. So like for a retroflex, it's just pointing a little higher for bunched, it's a little bit more neutral. And the hardest thing I think with R is that you can't really see what's going on in the mouth and they can't either versus if, you know, TH, I always used to tell the teachers do not give me a TH kid, you can anything to work on that, bite your tongue. You know, like it's rolling it so easy and there's one cue for that versus R, there are so many nuances. So how does getting them to see and feel what they do, that kind of biofeedback piece play in with the sound?
So I, especially for older kids, I will work with them to figure out what their strength is. For some of them, they can really hear if they're accurate or not. For some of them, they can feel when they hit the tongue placement, some of them, we're going to have to rely on a visual. And like you said, we can't, like we can't see in the mouth. So biofeedback includes different tools we can use to kind of give us almost like x-revision in a way to be able to see what is actually happening with the tongue.
So there's electropolitography, there's ultrasound, and then there's something called visual acoustic biofeedback, which is like think spectrograph, like a speech wave, right? And I already, I got all excited and I forgot your question. How we use that because you can't really see what the mouth is doing. So we've got to get creative. And as you're saying, all of these fancy technical tools, what if I am just little Lisa in her speech room in the pool and I don't have access to that?
Is there any other way like that would be amazing if I was in a clinic and had these kind of really technical tools, but what are my kind of non-technical things to that? I can make sure that I am doing to get as good of awareness, I guess, for what they can see and feel for what they do if I don't have access to things like that. I am going to answer that and then I'm going to convince you that you do have access. So the first answer would be to get a phone, turn on the light and take a video , like get right up in their mouth when they're making that production and just figure out , I can almost always get a decent angle to where we can get a decent video of their production. We watch the video back and you can pause and go in slow motion and that's really helpful.
So it's not in real time but I use that a lot with my students so that we can at least see like the replay. So that's the low tech, lower tech option because I think even with the flashlight and a mirror, it's just hard to think about all that during the production for both the student and the SLP so I think it helps to have the video to watch back but so elect rophotography, ultrasound, expensive, I totally get it, visual acoustic, it's free. There is a free app called, yes, called the Start app, S-T-A-R-T, it's from B itzlab NYU and did I mention it's free? So there's like, there's no reason that every single SLP can't use this. It's an iPad app so that is one barrier but they now have it available on a website as well.
Amazing. So in the episode notes too where we can find more information on that app so what specifically, what does it do then? What am I, when I create an account and I'm there with the student, what is it, I have them say the earth on, what is it tracking? So it's going to show you the wave, like it literally actually looks like a little ocean wave, it's very cute, it'll make a special shape whenever you say the R and there are different shapes it will make whenever it's correct versus incorrect and I know it sounds confusing and technical whenever you're not like, you know, I mean, I feel like it's one of those things that before you do it and realize how easy it really is, it seems really overwhelming, but I promise you, you can totally do it and I actually have partnered with the team that created the app so Dr. Tara McAllister from NYU, she and I have worked together to create a tutorial series and the first two of four videos are up on YouTube at Ruck the Earth speech, YouTube channel, so, you know, go check those out and just let me convince you that it's not that hard and it's perfect for elicitation.
So whenever you are giving, you still give the exact same cues that you would give if you didn't have this app available to you, but what the app does is shows you if those cues are working and you can actually see and measure how much closer to an accurate R your student is getting in real time, so you can adjust your cues and adjust your feedback. What are some of the cues that are kind of your go-to cues that you're working with kids, again, a lot of times it's an "uh" so that tongue, I used to always tell the kids I was working with like, your tongue is, I think it fell asleep or something, it's just kind of hanging out, we're doing all this workout here, but your tongue is just like, "uh" so I'm not doing anything, so what are some of the, do you have like go-to cues that you are doing to help them get that kind of placement in the back, the sides raised up and all of that, in kid-friendly terms that they understand? Right, so I feel like I think the hardest thing for kids if I had to really pair it down is just keeping those sides up, so I'll focus on cues for lateral bracing, I will explain to them, you know, I think there's about a hundred different ways you can describe lifting the sides up in terms of a metaphor, so trying to kind of tailor that to whatever the child is interested in, whether that's, you know, if they really like animals, then can you raise the sides of your tongue like something with wings? I feel like the first image I got was a stingray, you know how when these, it's flat, like a tongue kind of? I love that, I've never used that, but I love that, that's one of my favorite things about this too.
I'm gonna have to go sleep perfect, I'm just kidding, it's such a, but it's such an art form, right? Yes. I mean, I can give you, I literally can give you 100 cues right now, but then we could all make up something brand new that's never been done before tomorrow because we're also creative and amazing as SLPs, so I love that Lisa, I love the stingray, but yeah, stingray, dragon, eagle, fairy, butterfly, bird, whatever they're gonna relate to, I've heard it talked about like a taco tongue, I've heard it talked about, you can say it's like a bowl or a boat or just anything that's gonna hold the water curve. I, you know what, this isn't for lateral bracing, but one of my favorite, favorite cues comes from Megan Lease from Speech Production Labs Syracuse, and I love it because I think it really illustrates the tongue root retraction and the tension needed for the R, but she'll tell students to pull your tongue back like a bow and arrow and even have them point up and that helps elicit that like tongue tip elevation, but I love the bow and arrow idea. I think, so I'm a, I'm mostly doing teletherapy, so a lot of my cues are more verbal, but in term, like I have had students, even over teletherapy, I've had them do this place something on the sides of their tongue, like a small piece of potato chip or something, and then I want them to push it up and I want to hear the crunch, so I know that they've got it up inside their molars.
So those are just, so that's interesting, I guess I didn't even think about I have never personally done teletherapy and I always think like mad props to everybody that does because of even this where you're saying like usually you get up real close, you just have them put their mouth up on the camera and you're recording through just to see what 's going on and can you use these sort of apps and the same tricks and techniques that you're doing with students or kids in person, you can do that with teletherapy. So I, so if we want a video, usually I'll have, I'm lucky that I'll, usually the parent can be there because I'm doing this after school anyway, so they, I'll have the parent take the video and then we'll all watch it together and we all work together to figure out what we're seeing and to fix the angle for the start app. My current favorite setup is to have them download the app on their iPad and hold it up so that the student and I both can see it so we can talk about what we're seeing but there is on the website, there is a way to be able to like switch the audio back and forth because you don't want it, you don't want the audio to like come through the computer and be delayed and distorted and then, you know, that's a whole thing. But my, yeah, my favorite setup is to have them holding up an iPad. So I feel like there's really workarounds for almost everything.
I mean, I, it would be nice if I could get all up in their mouth and see it myself but yeah, it hasn't been too much of a problem. Are you beginning then with just where they're at and you're doing the screener , getting all of, trying to see if there's any facilitative context, are you then starting at like a word level? Like how are you, again, say, say this is the first time you're working with a student. What is sort of your progression of targeting all of the different contexts from start to to where you want to get them to be using it conversationally? So I actually use my, an informal assessment that I developed for my own casel oad that I do, I do sell.
Well, let's do that too. Thank you. So I actually try not to jump straight into elicitation because I feel like that's a good recipe for everyone getting frustrated. So we might spend some time working on just proprioceptive awareness and making sure that they do have the ability to associate their tongue from their jaw, making sure they understand the anatomy and what we might even be talking about because some kids don't know what their molars are yet and that's totally fine, but it's also easy to learn. So we spend some time on that, I'll make sure that they have a good mental representation of what the R should sound like.
I will make sure that if there is any kind of phonological issue that we address that so that they, I need to know that they understand what the R is and how it functions in language. So if we need to spend some time doing minimal pairs, we'll do that. Then I'll do the screener and figure out what context I think sounds best. Typically it will be at least a syllable if not a word. So R and isolation is actually like a whole soapbox for me that I won't.
We don't have time for that today, but yeah, usually it'll be a word that we start with and I like to tell SLPs it really doesn't matter what the word is. You just need a word and then you can build on that. Well, and I love that idea too, that idea of self-awareness is so huge and maybe self-rating. I've worked with students that couldn't even hear it and it's one of those things where you think they've got to hear it and when you start that game for their awareness of their sounds, you're like, oh, I guess not everybody does know they're saying a rabbit or whatever it is. How does that look on your journey with students and how you're bringing them into the awareness of their speech and trying to fix that R?
So it does, yeah. Some students have a lot of trouble with it and I find a lot of my students, they can hear when I have it wrong, but hearing themselves is a whole nother thing. So I'm really intentional from the very beginning of therapy to encourage them to give themselves some kind of score or ratings so that we can all be on the same page about what we're hearing and if we're getting closer. Early on in therapy, when we're very first trying to elicit that R, I'll use something like a 10 point scale and we'll both give a score and then kind of discuss whether or not we came to the same conclusion and why you could also, something I like doing is using my thumb and just a thumb straight up in the air is a perfect R and then there 's gradients between a thumbs up and a thumbs down. So where do you think that production was and we'll both give our rating?
Because they get more confident and more accurate and closer to a better approximation, then we can start kind of like narrowing that down. So eventually you work your way to where, okay, you have to decide, either it was perfect or it was incorrect and you need to try again. And that's just part of principles of motor learning and just helping that progression to being less specific with your feedback and being more just general, either right or wrong. So yeah, sometimes I'll have a really simple visual and we'll write the numbers down. Sometimes we'll just talk about it.
But either way, I'm trying to get them to reflect on either how it sounded, how it felt or how it looked, if like if we're using a biofeedback app because eventually I want them to be able to catch their own errors. So I try to start that from the very beginning of therapy. Is there anything you can have them do when they're in early stages for practice at home? Because we don't want to reinforce the thousand habits, all of that kind of stuff. But is there something when you're new to working with a student, will you get them set up and going on that app with like a parent or what does that look like?
Yeah, I send the start app home a lot. And if I don't want to reinforce an incorrect production, sometimes I'll just have them like play around with the app. We don't get high, like, you know, say we worked on the word caret that session and they had maybe, let's say the highest score they got was like a seven out of ten. Maybe I feel like, okay, for this student, that's high enough. Go ahead and practice that at home, but I'll tell them, I want you to just say it like two times with your app and then give yourself another score.
So the goal of that homework is much more about trying things out, playing around with the app and not getting high trials. So that's kind of, yeah, I love the idea of that they can see, I know even when I was working with kids on R, it was, I would just have them start to move their tongue around too. And how your tongue shapes the sounds, it might be like, oh, did we get close anywhere? So it's just that idea of what we're doing isn't working, so we need to move our tongue to get something to work. So what does that look like?
And I love, I pair that with cognitive reframing all the time, like giving them different cues, move your tongue different ways. I'm literally not asking you to say an R. I just want to hear what it sounds like. And getting them to break through that mental barrier of thinking R, and then their tongue falls flat in their mouth. That is so, because I'm thinking, so back again, I keep saying back in the day, because it's been a little since I've been in an elementary school, but that was one of the things I remember talking to kids about, I tried to break it down into four steps for them.
And we do each step independently to then put them together to make the sound and I would tell them the same thing, like I would say, okay, it's, we're not going to even think or because our brain, it's trying to, or I'll say our tongue, it's trying to override our brain and we're not going to let it because our brain is way smarter. So we're going to just do these things. So it is interesting that cognitive, that idea of cognitive reframing, because if they've said us since the beginning of time in their little lives, that when they think are, they're going to say, you know, it's totally what it is that it just takes over. Because we're kind of wrapping up our chat today, is there any kind of big myth you think there is out there about our therapy or anything you wish somebody would have told you the first time you sat down to work with an R student, just so you had, you know, the best advantage going in from the start? I think just that, I think maybe to just not be afraid to try different things, take a break or refer.
If you are feeling stuck, then it's not always, I just, I want to take away the shame and the self doubt because it's a really hard phoneme to treat and it doesn't mean that you are a bad therapist, like, I mean, we can all, of course we all have room to grow, but I would just rather see kids be passed along or like some kind of more collaborative group effort to helping these kids. Well, in general, it's okay to ask for help. I think even if you're working in a school and not a clinic around other SLPs, you have access to a group of people, even if it's a small group of people. So start there, ask your peers, and then I always think to like in 2025, we are so connected. And there are so many resources, I'm really excited to go check out your YouTube channel.
So what, what are some of your favorite resources that, that you would like to us to share with our audience today? My favorite resources, I mean, on the YouTube channel, I'm really trying to grow that and create more free content to help SLPs and kids. I have, of course, all about elicitation that they can take at RockTheR University.com. I have some Burem decks that I'm really proud of with, you know, Jenny Burem and Burem Speech and the Start app, I would love, I mean, that's not my app, but I would love for SLPs to check that out too, because it is, it has totally changed the way that I listen to the R sound and it's been so helpful. And I think you said to this, the speech production lab was another good resource to check out.
The speech production lab, so if, so the, oh, and the R assessment, I would love for people to check that out. But the three accounts that I actually would love to point people towards on Instagram would be BitSlab Start, Speech Production Lab, and then S-Y-R for Syracuse. And then the last one is, hold on, biofeedback, clinical biofeedback lab underscore MSU. So if you want some, like, if you want to hear directly from some star scientists, those are the places you should go. Well, this has been amazing.
I really appreciate you hopping on and chatting with me today. And I do, even the first thing I thought of when I was like, well, we need to get Lindsey on here is one of our presenters for the Speech Sound Disorder series is Dr. Cher McLeod. And she's the one that back, I want to say it was 2020, I always joke and say she broke the internet when she said that we can work on R at, you know, she had that, the quote unquote new norms, we weren't new, but they were reinterpreted and based into our research. And so it was perfect that we had this conversation.
So just want to remind everyone, if you want to learn more, we will have all of the links to everything Lindsey shared with us today. Also, please join us for that Speech Sound Disorder series. So again, that goes live on October 8th. But if you are listening after this or can attend live, there are on demand to replace through the end of this year. So definitely check that out at bethebrightest.com.
That's also where you'll find information on today's episode. So Lindsey, thank you again, appreciate you so much, and go check out your channel. And I'm already calling you on Instagram, but I have not hopped on YouTube. So I definitely will do that next.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I cannot wait. I have an awesome lineup for the Speech Sound Disorder series. So I will definitely check that out.
I'm excited. Okay. Thank you.
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