It isn’t till about second grade that your child may acquire fluent speech, free of articulation errors. But there are certain patterns of inaccuracy in speech that can make a child difficult to understand. This can also pertain to younger children.
Here are a few common patterns of speech and ways to improve speech clarity in your toddler.
Not saying the last sound of a word
This is a very common speech issue in younger children. It can be difficult to understand what a child is saying if they are leaving off the last sound of a word. For instance, “bae” could mean “bag”, “bad”, or even “bath”. It is the context clues that enable us to know what the child means.
Typically, by age two, a child should be putting consonants on the ends of words. To encourage children to say the last sound of a word, accentuate or exaggerate these consonant when you model them. Start with words that end in, /k/, /t/, /p/, or /m/. Try and have your child exaggerate the end of the word.
Making speech errors at the beginning of words
Initial voting is another speech pattern error that young children make. This is why a child says gat instead of cat, big instead of pig, or dape instead of tape. If you notice, when you say the letters, /b/ vs /p/, /d/ vs /t/, and /g/ vs /k/, your mouth is doing the same movement to make both sounds. The difference is the throat and vocal cords. When you make these sounds, you can feel a buzzing sensation, when you put your fingers on your throat.
The issue tends to be when a child goes from saying a non-buzzing sound to a buzzing sound. They would rather keep it all buzzing.
A technique used to correctly make the sound is to whisper. Your vocal cords don’t buzz when you whisper. Say these words that begin with these sounds with your child, but whisper them. Have them model this with you.
Check back with First Words Speech Therapy for more ways to improve your child’s speech clarity. Until then, contact us for more information.
