speech therapy

[harriman]

My daughter is 3 years and 8 months and has another year to go at preschool.
Her vocabulary is wide but she has trouble saying one or two letters.
She cannot say her S's, eg, she will say 'hilly' instead of 'silly'
So far I haven't done anything as I feel that she is still young but her preschool want to refer her for assessment to see if she needs speech therapy. This is fine by me but is there anything I can do while we wait for an appointment (months apparently)
( i already try to get her to hiss like a snake as part of a game - she can just about do it but it is difficult for her)

[kitykat]

Wen i was little i went to a speech therpist and it didn't do me any harm the best thing you can do is to keep doing wot your doing until u can get an appointment then they can give you advice but i think it will be to just keep doing wot your doing. x

[spudqueen]

I'm sure she'll grow out of it, probably before her speech therapy appointment! When I was that age I used to say lellow instead of yellow but apparently I could say y as a seperate letter.

[PinkFizz]

my son is 6 and he cant prononuce 'th'. Which makes some words sound very odd. He either replaces it with an F or an L depending on what the word is,so for thistle he says fistle and for 'the' he says either 'fe' or 'le' but pronounced in the same way as 'the'. I was hoping he would grow out of it but think I may have to do something soon.

[mycats]

My boyfriend is 31 and cant say "th" he says it as "f" lol I think it's cute (sorry harriman, that isnt very helpful is it?)

[kate1976]

My son had the same problem but he replaced S with G, he was sent to a speech therapist via his nursery and after about 2 sessions and a lot of working with me at home he was saying S fine, it also helped that he loved the programme 64 zoo lane so singing along to that song helped him!

Don't worry too much, just keep up with trying to get her to say S whilst you wait for the appointment and sing songs which have a few S sounds in, she'll get there in the end!

Good luck!

[Sparkles3]

I had a concern about my son, who is a similar age to your daughter. I spoke to my health visitor, who was able to give me a sheet of approximate dates when children learn to say various sounds. My mind was put at rest to see that whilst 50% could say a certain sound by age 3, 90% could say it by age 5 - ie. there is a wide gap in the pronunciation of certain sounds. I can't remember offhand where 's' comes into the scale, but I would advise that you speak to your health visitor about it as she may have a similar sheet that can put your mind at rest. My health visitor also suggested that speech therapy may assist. She said that the waiting list was quite long (a few months) so it might be worth putting our names down and withdrawing if the problem sorted itself out. I haven't pursued it, as I was relaxed by the paper guidance - and it seems to have sorted itself out! Good luck.

[Drusilla1S]

This may help. It tells of the problems encountered at various ages.

http://www.members.tripod.com/~Caroline_Bowen/ acquisition.html

[butterfly23]

When I was 3 there were a number of things I couldn't say. Like 'P' I would say 'alate' for 'plate', or 'F' I would say 'alower' for 'flower', I never had speech therapy, but my speech is perfectly fine. I'm sure your son will grow out of it.

[curiosity]

There are some sounds that physically your child is unable to position their mouths in until a certain developmental age. I understood TH being one of these. However Pinkfizz my daughter is exactly the same as your son & Mycats bf. she sounds any th as f as in fank you. However she is 15 now. We have tried to correct her believing it to be slang/sloppy language, but when I watched her she doesn't correctly place her tongue in the right position to physically speak the TH sound (try saying it without moving you tongue forward & your tongue touching your teeth) She was down in her hearing test and needed gromits when she was 6 and I think she had never correctly heard the TH sound and therefore never learn't this language naturally in her early years of foundation language skills, I now wish I had had some advice from a speech therapist about exercises she could have done, as even though it is not in any form a disabilty it's somefink! she may wish to change, which would have been easier earlier. I'd check for glue ear just in case his hearing is a bit down. It's not a major problem, but is frustrating and affects the ability to communicate comfortably in a group situation or noisy environment. Good Luck

[curiosity]

Sorry just realised that was an answer for Pinkfizz, only because I'm aware of the TH fing, I'm not sure about S's but I think it's worth a speech therapist giving you advice if it's free, I wouldn't worry though, I think S is one of those sounds I've mentioned, I remember calling Spaghetti, pagetti probably cos I couldn't say the S. Good Luck