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Expert Q&A

	By Mindy Hudon Speech and Language Pathologist

Every other word out of my daughter's mouth seems to be "like." It drives me nuts! What can I do about it?

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!

The children in that classroom made a goal to reduce the number of fillers they used. For them, all it took was for someone to make them aware of the habit in order for them to take practical steps to break it.

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