Speech Sounds
Joanne Jones 
Find out more about Speech Sounds
Speech Sounds
This blog will help you in supporting your knowledge of speech sounds, where to go to for advice, and when to be concerned.
First, it is important to know that speech sounds are at the “top of the pyramid” frequently, it is the last thing that speech therapists are worried about. Attention and listening and their understanding of language, are the foundations of the pyramid and speech sounds (usually) progress naturally over time, hence they are at the top of the pyramid. However, it is important to acknowledge that children who find it hard to be understood due to their speech sounds, will often “opt out” of talking and this is where we would like to give the children more support. Often when children start pre-school and reception (in the UK) and they are introduced to phonics, speech sounds naturally develop therefore you will often find that speech therapists are reluctant to do more specific work on speech sounds until the end of the reception year. We as parents can do lots to help at home and here are a few tips and tricks!
The Trafford assessment of speech sounds (see link below) is an excellent, easy to use, tick list resource that parents can use to help assess their child at home. It will help you identify which speech sounds your child is missing, and which ones they find difficult, it will also tell you what the developmental norms are. For example, the sounds p, b, m, n, and w often are the first to develop, however we can still expect children between the ages of between 2 and 3 years to still be perfecting these sounds, therefore if you have a 4-year-old struggling with these sounds, it would be a good idea to speak to a speech therapist.
https://www.docdroid.net/d2A9ZEl/trafford-assessment-of-speech-sounds-pdf
Processing
A process is a pattern that children use in speech. For example, final consonant deletion is very common in children up to 3.5 years, this is where they will often miss the last consonant of a word. For example, “dog” becomes “do” and “cat” becomes “ca”. Fronting is where sounds are produced in different parts of the mouth to where they should normally come from. For example, the sounds p, b, and m are short sounds produced by your lips, t, d, and s are front sounds (where the tongue is behind your teeth) but sometimes children get the areas of the mouth muddled round hence the clarity is not as clear. This is common in dummy suckers and bottle users; it is normal at a young age but should be looked at if it continues beyond the expected norm (the FREE Trafford assessment will tell you age expectations)
How can we help at home?
Often just being aware of the sounds your child struggles with an emphasising these sounds is enough to help. Keep inputting and modelling the correct sound BUT do not correct your child as we do not want to lower their confidence. For example, if they struggle with the sound “d” you could emphasise and model that sound as much as you can; “look! Here is daddy, d,d,d, daddy. I hear a d” make it fun an enjoyable and your child will be picking up on it.
Check for a tongue tie, although often picked up at birth with babies who struggle to feed, a posterior tongue tie can often go unnoticed, and this can affect speech sounds. A way to check at home is by getting your child to open their mouth wide and getting them to touch the roof of their mouth with the tip of their tongue, if they are struggling, it could be a sign of a tongue tie.
Children who suck their thumb and fingers or who use a dummy/bottle will often have underdeveloped muscles in their mouth, so try to cut out dummy and bottle usage.
Children who have not weaned very well and have a very soft or pureed diet is common in children with speech sound difficulties, therefore introducing more chewy and crunchy foods such as meat, toast, breadsticks, apricots, and raisons will help build the muscles in the mouth.
Check their hearing and tonsils, particularly if they have been prone to a lot of ear and throat infections, an appointment at the ENT could really help.
Once you have done all the above, the next step is to start implementing strategies at home. For example, if your child is speaking but you cannot understand what they are saying, then introducing signing or symbols/pictures will help your child become a confident communicator. It does not have to be a permanent need but in the short term it will boost their self-esteem.
If you can understand what they are saying but it is not clear or eligible to others DO NOT CORRECT, just model back the correct way of saying the word, praise them for a good effort and DO NOT ask questions, get them to repeat or tell them to do something, this will only apply pressure to your child which we do not want.
Avoid background noise such as televisions and washing machines, play listening games such as going on an environmental walk and listening to the birds singing, or aeroplanes flying.
Practice lip, mouth, and tongue movements such as yawning, blowing, sucking, and kissing. All these actions will help build an awareness of movements around the mouth and will help strengthen muscles.
Have ten minutes a day of “special time” where the adult inputs and models lots of sounds that the child struggles with, in a playful way.