Is my child’s speech clear enough?

If people outside of your immediate family have trouble understanding your child, you may want to talk with a speech pathologist. You will want to find out if the sounds your child mispronounces are appropriate for his or her age or not. To give you a guideline, look at the list below of the ages at which most children say each sound. We expect certain sounds by age 2, but others may not be clear until age 7 or later. If you’re not sure, it’s always better to ask.

Guideline for ages of sound acquisition:

By age 3 : all vowels, p,b,m,d,g,h,

By age 4: k,t, f, v, ng, j, ch, th ( as in think )

By age 5: sh, zh

by age 7: l,r,s, th ( as in these )

Does my child need speech therapy?

If your child pronounces certain sounds incorrectly and is older than the average age of acquisition, then your child may need speech therapy. There are several questions to ask yourself first, though :

• Can my child make this sound correctly at all? If a child says a sound correctly part of the time, we say that he or she is stimulable for that sound. This means he is learning how to say it ,even if he doesn’t use it all of the time yet. Keep working on it at home for a couple of months and see if you notice improvement. If not, contact me for next steps.

• Do people outside my family have trouble understanding my child? If your child is older than 3 , she should be understood the majority of the time by people who don’t know her well. If you find that you are frequently interpreting for your child, you may want to set up a time for a speech evaluation.

• Are the incorrect sounds interfering with learning to read? Sometimes, a child who struggles with pronouncing a sound will have trouble learning to read that sound, too. For example, if he says a W for an R sound, he may confuse R and W when learning phonics. When the mispronunciations are affecting reading, I recommend immediately addressing the speech errors.

• Is my child self-conscious about the speech errors?  The answer to this question is much more dependent on the child’s personality than on their age. If your child is aware of and concerned about his or her speech errors, then we want to address them. We want to do all we can to promote a healthy self- image in our children, and if there is a concern about speech, we can take care of it before it becomes a major concern.

• Do I feel comfortable helping my child with this sound? If you understand how the sound is made in the mouth, can demonstrate it to your child, and can tell if your child is saying it correctly, then you will want to work with your child on your own. That may be all he needs to get it. But, if you hit a roadblock and can’t figure out how to make more progress, give me a call. We can figure out just what strategies you need to help your child master those sounds.