Nasal airflow (Originally written as part of Child Language Singapore)

I'm currently reading Pam Marshalla's Apraxia Uncovered.  In case you don't know her, Marshalla is basically a living guru in the field of speech therapy, often associated with innovative treatments in the areas of apraxia, articulation, and oral motor. 

The book walks the reader through the 7 stages of phoneme development.  We learn how typically-developing babies must learn the "action skill" (among many others) of Differentiating-- learning how to differentially channel airflow through either the mouth (oral pathway) or nose (nasal pathway).  This is important to speech acquisition, since some phonemes are produced through the mouth (e.g. /a/, /t/), and some through the nose (e.g. /m/, /n/).

Marshalla proposes that a typically-developing baby would naturally start to learn about nasal sounds when the tongue, which is very large in babies relative to the size of the mouth, naturally falls back toward the velum as they vocalize while lying on their backs, which they do quite a lot before they can sit up on their own.  The "ng" sound (a nasal consonant) is produced inadvertently. 

In speech therapy, when therapists are working with older children who still haven't learned how to differentiate and control air flow through the mouth and nose, therapists may use mirrors placed close to the nose (because when air flows through the nose, a fog is visible), or other tools like flexible tubes or nose flutes to help teach this skill.

On a different but related note, my 6-month old baby is battling her first cold.  Lately, she can be fussy, bothered by the clear mucus draining from her little nose.

But... there are other moments when she seems to be playing with nasal airflow,  now that the runny nose makes air flowing through it much more audible than normal.  Quick, slightly forceful exhalations through her nose where you can even see her diaphragm moving inward to push the air out.  Longer, more drawn out exhalations through the nose when there is more movement of mucus to give her that audible feedback of what's happening to the air.

eeewwwwww...

And I wonder... should I visit www.pammarshalla.com, tell her all about my daughter's discovery, and suggest this be included in her list of ideas for therapy??

(Actually, as I write this, I'm thinking that my daughter probably isn't the first child in the world to play with nasal airflow in this manner.  Along our paths of acquiring all the skills we need to learn to be functional adult humans, I'm sure there are countless "accidental" learning experiences that actually teach us much more than any parent or teacher could ever do.  Let's celebrate colds, mucus, and learning!)

Addendum, 5/4/2013--
I think Baby did learn about nasal airflow, because later that day, the day she had so much mucus, she produced a prolonged, definite /m/.  Wow!