Should My Child Be Able to Say This Sound Properly?
By Natalie Cohen, Owner of Natalie Cohen- SLP
Certified Speech-Language Pathologist in Lexington
As a speech-language pathologist, I help school-age children with difficulties producing sounds correctly, also known as articulation therapy.
One of the most frequent questions I get from parents is, “Is there something wrong with my child’s speech because they can’t properly produce (a) particular sound(s)?”
All speech sounds should be mastered by certain ages. Most children learn to pronounce these sounds prior to the expected age, which are as follows:
Age 2: b, d, h, m, n, p
Age 3: f, g, k, t, w, ng
Age 4: q
Age 5: ch, j, l, s, sh, y, bl
Age 6: r, v, br, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, kl, kr, pl, st, tr
Age 7: z, sl, sp, sw, th
(Based on the Goldman Fristoe – 2 Test of Articulation, 2000)
As you may recall, a child’s first words are often “papa”, “mama”, “dada”, or “no” because these sounds are the first to be developed. For example, my son didn’t say words like “cat”, “go”, “dog” or “watah” (water) until months after he started to speak because he was not physically old enough to produce the sounds yet.
Another factor that we use to assess whether a child needs speech therapy is how intelligible a child’s speech is. Just like our speech sounds, developmentally our speech is easier to understand the older we get. A good reference for this is:
Age 2: Can my child be understood by familiar adults most of the time?
Age 3: Can my child be understood by unfamiliar adults most of the time?
Age 4: Can my child be understood by unfamiliar adults almost all of the time?
Age 5: Can my child be understood by unfamiliar adults all of the time?
(Based on Flipsen Jr, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, Volume 20, 2006)
Articulation therapy is also more likely needed if other family members have/had speech sound difficulties, if your child has any hearing, learning or neurological difficulties, or if your child suffered from frequent ear infections as an infant or toddler.
If you are concerned that your child has not mastered these sounds, they are not understandable by these particular age guidelines, or any of the above factors apply, I would recommend that you speak to your child’s pediatrician to get a speech-language assessment. You may also contact me or any other local speech-language therapists.
In general, I recommend starting articulation therapy sooner, rather than later. The longer intervention is delayed, the harder it is for a child to learn to make the sound(s) properly. I would suggest not waiting past 2nd grade to start articulation therapy. However, if you start later, therapy can still be very successful.
I am currently available to do virtual speech therapy for school-age children with articulation difficulties. In addition, I work with adults in accent modification (helping non-native American speakers improve the American English accent).
Natalie Cohen- SLP
