LIP LINKED TO LISP. Advise needed.

by BAILEY
(UK)

Hello please can you help

I am a singing teacher working with male 17 year old talented singing student who has a lisp. He wants to get rid of his lisp and has asked me to help him. I discovered he had a tongue-tie early on and I asked him if he had been to see a DR/SLT about this which he tells me he did in the past and they had told him the tongue tie wasn't necessarily causing his lisp and they didn't suggest surgery.

I have explained I cannot replace what a trained SLT does however I would help him where I can during his lessons and work alongside any advise he receives from the DRs/SLT. We have made some progress and I have discovered that he can make an accurate sounding S.

HIS LISP S: The air escapes laterally at one side and his lip drops with the old sounding S. NEW ACCURATE S: He can re adjust his tongue position to create a clear new accurate sounding S however to make this clear and accurate he has to smile. (Pull up/back the lip that usually drops) When he relaxes his lips, the old S sound starts to creep back in.

He is desperate to create this sound without having to smile all the time. We are doing some lip strengthening exercises but any other ideas that could help would be welcomed. Are there any voice experts here that would be happy to help me understand more about the lip and it’s connection to the lisp?

It would be good to chat through this student's case with someone with more experience of this. He can make a clear accurate S sound comfortably apart from at this point he has to smile.

Any suggestions?