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It's Um, Like, You Know
Teaching Your Kids to Speak Clearly
By Mindy Hudon, M.S., CCC-SLP
"The other day, I like went to the mall and um, I got like this really cool shirt. It had like these um, um, red designs on it."
Have you ever heard your child use um or like frequently in a sentence? Chances are, you have! And if you're like many parents, you probably wonder why they do it and when they will stop.
As a speech and language pathologist, one of my challenges working with school-aged children is omitting the use of fillers um and like. I frequently hear these dreaded words when I am talking with students in the classroom. To adults, fillers can sound like fingernails on a chalkboard.
Children use fillers to take up space while they're trying to organize their thoughts to express an idea, for example, "It means, um..." They also use the filler like to give examples when they are describing something: "It's like when..."
Amazingly, it is very difficult for some children to fluently express their thoughts without the use of fillers. You can test your child's dependency on ums and likes by asking him or her to describe something. Chances are, you will hear a filler.
Fillers are "trash words" -- if you don't use them when you write, then you don't need them when you talk. Throw them in the trash!
The over-use of fillers can make the listener think that the talker doesn't know what he or she is talking about. Using a silent pause, rather than a filler sounds more articulate and knowledgeable. Imagine if the President of the United States spoke this way: "Fellow Americans, it's um, like very important that we like..." Would anybody take him seriously?
Surprisingly, children become aware of the over-use of fillers rather quickly. Some children I've worked with have counted how many times they used um or like during the day. One class of students reported that they used 365 fillers in one day. That is a lot of fingernails on the chalkboard!