27 Mth's Old Pronunciation

My oldest son did that too, but mainly when the hard C sound came at the end of the word. Like fire truck became fire trut. He had no other speech or hearing problems or even mispronunciations. But it self-corrected within about 6 months. And now he is a very, very verbal 9 year old!

Don't worry about it. My youngest had some major pronunciation issues at that age (many, many sounds, not just one), and I was told by a friend who is a speech therapist that they don't worry about most sounds until the child is 6 and still saying the incorrect sound. Apparently their verbal skills are still developing up to that point. My daughter has finally grown out of all of her "incorrect" pronunciation and is nearly 5. Up until a few months ago, she'd pronounce "cheese" like "kheese" and until a year ago, "cupcake" was "tuptate." It drove me crazy, and correcting her did no good at all! But she straightened it all out as she got older.

I am a speech pathologist, and I work in the public schools. At your son's age, that sound error substitution is very common. It is called "fronting" the back sounds. It is considered a developmental (i.e. normal) error, because kids are not expected to master those /k/ and /g/ (back sounds) until around age 4. In the schools, we qualify kids for speech therapy for those sounds when they are age 5, or one year delayed from the developmental norms. Don't worry about it, just repeat the words back to him in the correct way. Don't ask him to try again or repeat you, just make sure he is hearing a correct model.

Your friend's daughter, on the other hand, should have gotten those sounds by age 5, and should probably have an evaluation. If you have an open-enough relationship with her parents, though, you might suggest she try some oral-motor techniques to train the back of the tongue to raise, rather than the front of the tongue (as in "tat" for "cat). Hold down the front of the tongue with a spoonful of peanut butter, toothbrush while brushing before bed, or some other yummy food, and see if she can say those sounds by themself, and then move on to words: "cat," "car," "game" or whatever /k/ or /g/ words with the back of the tongue instead of the front. Make it fun. If it is too difficult, she may want to seek an evaluation due to the lack of stimulability.

Good luck!

Hi Amy,
When my son was in nursery school at age 3, they had a speech/hearing screening for the kids. My son would say a few things like that and there are certain sounds that just come later on....they just cannot DO certain sounds well until certain muscles/control is developed. I wouldn't stress about it yet. They even noted those sounds on the result sheets and I believe that "hard K" is O. of those sounds.
My son used to say (for silver, doctor, mother) sil-vah, doc-tah, moth-ah. Then O. day out of the blue, he said "Is this crayon gray or silVERRRRRR?" To tell you the truth, I kind of miss the "ah" endings. :-)
I've also been told not to correct them, just to say the words correctly when you say them.....good luck, I'm sure he's just fine.

He's only 27 months old... by that I mean, (and I learned this because my son had speech therapy).... that at each age, a child is "able" to say certain sounds/words/letters... but not all of them, nor all at one time.
And, there are front-of-the-mouth sounds, back-of-the-mouth sounds, and throat sounds and combinations of that. For which the ability to do it & pronounce AND articulate it "correctly" is attained at certain ages.
As well as the number of "words" a child says.

I would not be worried about our son... again, you said he can pronounce it correctly... BUT he seems to be copying this girl.
There is nothing wrong with repeating the word correctly to him...

All the best,
Susan

I don't think you have anything to worry about. I have a 4 year old daughter and she still has a hard time with some words. For example: zoo is kazoo, pajamas are kajamas. Her dr. nor her teachers have ever said anything about it. Some people do ask if she is from Chicago!

I don't think they really grasp ALL the sounds until they start to read and make since of things. English is a tricky language.

If you are really worried I would go to the dr. They are there to sooth your worries!

Amy,
I am a speech therapist who works with communication impaired children under the age of three. What your son is doing is call "fronting," i.e., producing a sound made in the back of the mouth in a more forward placement. It is considered age-appropriate until the age of four, by most speech therapists. Beyond that age, parents are encouraged to contact their local school's speech therapist for a possible evaluation to determine whether speech therapy is warranted. My daughter also began to "mispronounce" a sound at the age of three that she had already seemed to master. It was a more advanced sound, so I tried not to worry. You are correct in stating that there is nothing wrong with your son's hearing. It's just one of the "processes" little ones use while their "sound systems" are developing.

He is still pretty young, I wouldn't worry much about it, yet!

Lots (all 7 of mine) of kids mispronounce things...usually it just goes away. What I wouldn't give to have video or a tape recorder of all the things my kids used to say incorrectly:)

My now 6 yr old used to have that same issue when he was younger. He said "turch" for church and stuff like that, he also used to not be able to say the "sp" sound so, "forts" was sports and "fecial" was special...but he is fine now, with no help needed. I just would correct him and eventually he could do it on his own...took him a bit though:)

Only 1 out of all my kids/nephews had to have speech therapy and he couldn't say the "R" sounds...so my name was "Kaa-ma" instead of Karma...he always sounded like he was from Boston:) Believe it or not he was in speech for almost 7 yrs and some people still hear it, but my DH and I don't...I guess we are just used to hearing him, the way he is?

Talk with your ped, at the next visit and see what he says...but I am inclined to leave it be since you know he used to be able to say it the correct way...does that make sense?

To fix this at the speech therapy they use a sort of tongue like depresser. It has a spongie pink thing at the end of like a q-tip stick. They stick it in the child's mouth and it forces the child to not use their teeth, tongue, or lips to sound out the word. They make it a game so that it doesn't traumatize the child. but for now I wouldn't worry about it. maybe when he hits preschool you can have him evaulated if he you think he may need help to correct it. my son is almost three and says fider for spider. He can say sun but when the s is in front of a consanant he turns it into a f sound. It's kind of cute, but I'm sure he'll correct it eventually. There are some speech problems that need help with correcting but this one doesn't sound like one of them.

my daughter picked up little habits like this from her friends. It shows she's listening, thinking, using her motor skills to mimick, then cognative skills to apply the change in her own vocabulary.

He'll tire of it and move on. He's intelligent. Give him a few months and he'll find something else to move on to.

Since your son has pronounced the these sounds correctly he is probably just imitating his friend but it would be a good idea to get her hearing checked and maybe his as a precaution. My youngest brother had hearing loss and many of these words sound like what he said. and just because they can hear a pin drop doesn't mean they can hear all levels of human speech. My brother used to be able to hear the tiniest crinkle of a candy wrapper in the other room too. He could have also developed some inner ear fluid/ pressure recently that is not letting his ears work correctly.

my youngest daughter did this as well- her name is Kaylyn and she always pronounced it Taylyn- but if I or someone else said "Taylyn" she would get upset and say "no my name is Taylyn" meaning Kaylyn. She did eventually just grow out of it. She is 4 now- it was basically overnight because I never really noticed when she stopped- she just did! I can't even remember if it was before she started pre-K this past fall or after. I think it was before though.
There may still be a hearing problem even if he can hear sounds from other rooms- that doesn't mean he can hear the differences in the way things are pronounced. We knew that our daughter could because of her "correcting" us saying her name wrong. You could still have him checked by a doctor just to be safe! If there is no hearing problem this will be something he will grow out of :) Hope this helps

Children tend to go through stages with speech development. Even if there weren't another child for him to copy, and this seems to be what he's doing in this case, he might change from correct pronunciation to a mis-pronunciation for a while on some words. Since the girl he's copying is older, he may think he wasn't saying the words correctly at first... and he is going to pick things up from other children faster than he will from adults. I would simply keep on pronouncing the words correctly back to him... in a natural way, not in a correcting way... and wait for this phase to pass.

My nephew also did this and I spoke to the speech teacher at my school and she said it is called front sounds and usually they grow out of it and if it is still occurring once he is school age to consult with the speech pathologist at his school and she will do an assessment. :)

My daughter did the same thing. It started around 2 1/2 to 3 yrs old. She actually had very large tonsils and was throwing her sounds forward rather than trying to use the back of her throat. Her tonsils were getting in the way. After they were removed, we went to a speech therapist to have her evaluated. We couldn't get the insurance to pay for it but the therapist told us what we could do. By the time she was 5, she talked fine. Actually, the pre-k teacher said she noticed an improvement within a few weeks. You could have him checked just to see if anything could be blocking. We never used any tongue depressor or other tools.
BTW we had her tonsils and adenoids removed due to snoring and sleep apnea issues. The ENT said she probably would grow into her tonsils by the time she was 6 or so.

He is not even 3. He will continue to pronounce some words with other sounds.. Wait till he starts exploring language.. Be sure to write down some of the fun words and pronunciations also funny word combos.. One of our favorites from our daughter was 'holdume" while her arms were stretched up and making "grabby hands"...