Children and adults
Voice disorders.
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«Singing is my passion, I do theatre too, but every now and then I lose my voice. My singing coach suggested I see a phoniatrician and have a speech and language assessment.»
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«I'm a teacher, and by the evening I really struggle to speak. I'd like to understand better what's going on.»
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«My little boy is always shrieking when he's with his friends. I keep telling him not to shout, but he just can't help it. Now it's even hard to listen to him, he's so terribly hoarse. I don't know what to do.»
More often than not, the first contact begins like this.
Why it happens
What I work on.
The voice comes from a delicate balance between breath, vocal cords and resonators. When that balance breaks down, the sound changes: it becomes hoarse, weak, effortful.
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A hoarse or tired voice
The voice weakens, turns breathy and, by the evening, struggles to hold up.
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People who use their voice a lot
It often affects people who use their voice for work: teachers, anyone on the phone all day long.
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Voice care and use
A large part of the work is learning to use the voice without mistreating it.
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Children's voices
Children can develop dysphonia too, usually from using their voice too intensely and with too much strain.
How the assessment works.
We start with a voice assessment, for children and adults, to understand where the strain comes from and what's feeding it.
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First contact
You tell me what's worrying you, the age, what the school or paediatrician has noticed. Together we work out whether an assessment makes sense, with no obligation.
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Shared assessment
I observe closely, over one or more appointments, without rushing. I look at how they communicate, how they play, how they are. You're part of the process, not a bystander.
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Feedback
I explain what I've seen in plain words, with no jargon. No labels thrown around: just an honest picture and what we can do with it.
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A tailored journey
If a course of therapy is needed, we build it around the person, with shared goals that we review as we go. Never a package decided in advance.
For the voice, the assessment is usually completed in a single appointment. When a medical examination of the vocal cords is needed, I coordinate with the ENT specialist.
The approach I've chosen
The PROEL method.
For the voice I use the PROEL method, developed by Professor Alfonso Borragán in 2005. It's an approach based on proprioception and elasticity: the person learns to feel their own voice from the inside, to recognise how they produce it and to make it easy again.
I attended the training course with Professor Borragán himself and ran a pilot project on this method. Ever since, it's been the framework I bring into the practice whenever I work on a voice, with adults and children alike.
The goal is a euphonic voice, that is, a voice that comes out without compensating for anything: no tight throat, no strain, no hoarseness by the evening. A voice that becomes a means of connecting with others again, not a burden.
When an assessment makes sense.
A voice that stays changed for a long time is never just tiredness. Some signs deserve to be listened to.
- The voice has been hoarse or weaker for weeks
- It tires or fades after talking for a long time
- Your child always talks and plays at a very high volume
- You feel a constant strain in your throat just to make yourself heard
Who it happens to most
The most exposed voices.
Voice disorders arise from three things: a congenital predisposition, vocal abuse, or incorrect use of the voice in daily life. Sometimes the three factors blend together.
They're common in anyone who uses their voice for many hours a day: teachers, professionals on the phone, singers, actors, people who present on stage. The voice, like any muscle that works for long stretches, needs to be trained and to be rested.
Then there are children with their unbroken, treble voices, particularly prone to imbalances in the breath-voice coordination, that delicate link between breath and larynx. They grow up talking loudly, playing intensely, and that vocal strain leaves its mark.
How much it really weighs
When the voice no longer responds.
Losing your voice isn't only a clinical matter. The voice is how we make ourselves recognised, how we tie our thoughts to the world. When it weakens, grows husky, cracks towards the evening, we lose something we use every day without noticing.
For those who make their living from their voice, a teacher, a singer, an actor, a voice disorder can become a burden that seeps into work and into relationships. For a child who's always shrieking and then can no longer make themselves understood, it can turn into frustration, and sometimes isolation.
That's why, when I work on a voice, I first make room for the person behind the voice. Then we set up the journey.
How long a course of therapy lasts.
I don't work with set packages of sessions decided in advance, and you won't find a price list on this site. How long it takes depends on the person and on the goals we set together: an assessment can be wrapped up in a single appointment, while a course of therapy might last a few months or support a child's development over a longer period. No two journeys are alike, and we recalibrate as we go.
What we can do, as adults.
We can't ask a child not to shriek. We can ask them to do it without doing any harm. The same goes for adults who use their voice a lot: it isn't about speaking less, but about speaking in a way that doesn't wear it down. The voice grows light again when we stop paying a price for it.