Children don’t develop all their speech sounds at once. There is a general order in which they appear. Some, like the sound ‘b’, come early on in speech development. Other sounds, such as ‘th’, appear on the scene later. The age at which different children get to grips with sounds varies too. Parents usually know when their child’s speech development is in line with other children the same age. But what about when speech is delayed or hard to understand? If you’re concerned about your child’s speech sounds, there are plenty of things that you can do to help them.
Modelling
First off, there is a technique called speech ‘modelling’. This is just a fancy way of saying that when a child uses an incorrect speech sound, you repeat what they have said, but using the correct sound. For example, if your child says “Look mummy! Tat!”, you reply “Yes, cat. A black cat. What a nice cat”. In this example, the child gets to hear the correct speech sound modelled back to them 3 times. It is not considered helpful to obviously correct a child, for example you wouldn’t respond by saying “No, it’s a cat!”. It is best to build learning through praise and positive input; and saying “no” might be discouraging. It is also not advisable to encourage children to say sounds they can’t yet say. For example, if a child says “Hey, nice doddy”, you wouldn’t say “Can you say ‘doggy’?” If the child can’t yet say a ‘g’ sound, they will respond by saying “Doddy” again. There are two problems with this. By saying “Doddy” a second time, the child is reinforcing their incorrect way of saying it. Also, rather than experiencing success at achieving a ‘g’ sound, the child is instead not succeeding.
Auditory input. Eh? What’s that?
Apart from modelling, another good tip is so-called ‘auditory input’. This means giving a child lots of opportunities to hear sounds which they can’t yet say. If, for example, you’d like your child to learn the sound ‘t’, you can play games and share storybooks about Thomas the Tank Engine, Tom Thumb, Tom and Jerry, Teletubbies, Time Warp Trio, Tigger, Tiny Tim, Teddy or any other character whose name starts with a ‘t’ sound. The parent does lots of talking, whilst the child enjoys listening. Hearing the sound ‘t’ modelled repeatedly helps the child to build a good, strong blueprint for that sound in their brain.
Listening helps child speech
Listening games are also helpful. Good listening skills help children with speech sound development, plus helping them to learn new vocabulary and build their grammar knowledge. You can play listening games matching toys and pictures to musical, animal, transport and other environmental sounds. Any games where the child has to listen in order to play are good too. These include games like ‘Simon Says’; and matching games. Good listening skills are useful for decoding which speech sound is which and building up a solid set of sound blueprints. This supports children to successfully say those sounds later on.
Kirsty Henderson, November 2014
