Children often master their "R"s around 8 years old, so experts call R the "late 8". However, in our experience most children will naturally acquire this sound well before that time and waiting that long (or longer) to get it fixed just makes it harder!
The reason some children easily acquire R on their own and other children do not can depend on a few things. Maybe your child has some low muscle tone through their lips, mouth, tongue and/or jaw (see our article here about fun activities you can do at home to strengthen up your child’s oral musculature). If your child needed help acquiring other sounds before R, it is likely they may need help with this tough sound.
So What Sounds Should My 4 Year Old Have?
By 4 years old your child should be able to easily produce the following sounds all the time in conversation: H, M, B, P, W, F, V, K, G, L, Blends (e.g., two sounds together-- PL, SN, etc).
Most children by 4 years old will also have later developing sounds, such as: S, Z, SH, CH, J, Y, TH and of course, R and R blends (e.g., GR, BR, PR, etc).
Another important marker to think about is how intelligible your child is (i.e., how much can other people understand what your child says). A child of 4 years old should be at least 85% intelligible-- meaning people should understand at least 85% of what your child says, regardless of if the context is known or unknown.
If your child is having difficulty acquiring sounds at the appropriate times and others have a hard time understanding your child, speech therapy can help! Not only will speech therapy help your child acquire the sounds they are missing and help with their overall intelligibility, it can also help your child with their future academic skills.
Did you know children with articulation issues often have trouble with their pre-reading and reading skills? Speech therapy can help prevent and even work on these issues for your child.
If you are having concerns about your child’s development reach out to us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Does your child have frequent ear infections or bad seasonal allergies? If your child has these issues, they may end up with buildup of fluid in their ears. The fluid in your child's ears blocks sound from making it efficiently and clearly into their inner ear (where the actual hearing is done) causing hearing issues. Difficulty with hearing sounds can negatively impact your child's total communication development (meaning: speech development, language development and even social development!). If your child is not hearing how sounds are made correctly, they will likely have difficulty imitating sounds and words.
As we discussed in a previous post, children start their engagement and communication early on, so interference with your child's hearing can impact their development, particularly as they get older. Not only can their speech development (i.e., learning how to produce sounds correctly) become impacted, but their language development and social development can become stunted. Think of your child’s early years as practice for these type of skills (speech, language and social skills) for later in their childhood and even later life. If your child is not able to practice their skills, how will they be able to correctly use the skills they haven’t been able to practice?? After all, practice makes progress!
If you have concerns about your child’s ability to hear correctly, it is vital that you get their hearing checked out! You can speak to your pediatrician about your concerns and they may refer you to a pediatric audiologist or ENT. ASHA also has an online catalog of certified audiologists all over the country. Another resource is the Early Hearing Detection & Intervention - Pediatric Audiology Links to Services (EHDI-PALS).
Red-Flags that your child may have issues with their hearing:
If your child does have hearing issues due to fluid, your pediatrician and audiologist will determine the course of action to address their hearing loss; however, it is likely your child may need speech therapy as a result of the time they were not hearing correctly. Many of the children we work with at The Speech Space end up doing very well and can quickly progress through therapy once the fluid in their ears is no longer present. There is no harm in getting it checked out-- better safe than sorry!
Feel free to reach out to us at The Speech Space if you are having concerns about your child's development. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems!
Great article from ASHA on the causes of hearing loss in children
If you read our post about why straw cups are better than sippy cups, you’ll know that we have a lot to say about oral motor development in young children (because it impacts their speech development, among other things!). When we tell parents to work on strengthening their child’s oral musculature (i.e., lips, cheeks, tongue, jaw), we usually get a panicked look but we’re here to give you some great activities that you can easily incorporate at home. And trust us, they’re easy and fun!
2. More activities with straws (I know, seriously?!): Straws can also be used to do fun art projects or games, which can also help work on your child's oral structures/musculature and also their breath-support (children with weak oral musculature will often have weak breath-support as well). Breath-support is crucial for appropriate volume (being loud enough) and also for specific sounds in speech development. For an art activity you can simply drop some paint on paper and have your child blow it around with their straw to make a beautiful and fun picture. You can also set up a "soccer game" by using paper (or if your child has great breath-support, a cardboard box) as the field and blowing cotton balls into the goal. These are just two fun activities to help promote strengthening oral structures and breath-support.
Both little kids and big kids enjoy playing this type of game. A fun way to work on breath-support and oral motor skills
4. Food Spreading: This may sound weird, but hang with us for a second. Lots of kids have weakness in their tongues (think, when kids say “wight” instead of “light”). This is usually due to weakness in the tongue. “Food spreading” (totally made up name) is when you put a sticky, spreadable food along various parts of your child’s mouth. Peanut butter, Nutella, frosting, Cheez Wiz- anything that will stick is good. Use a spoon and spread a bit of the food along the top lip or bottom lip or sides of the mouth and have your child try to use their tongue to reach out and lick the food off. Easy as cake (or frosting)!
5. Whistles: These can easily be the most noisy (and sometimes annoying) of the all oral motor activities, but we can help you out to make these more tolerable. We recommend making the whistles YOURS, but telling your child that you’ll be happy to share them. When you introduce them, make sure to instruct your child to use their lips (rather than biting the whistle with their teeth to hold it). Feel free to use them outside only or just for small pockets of time (to keep your sanity), but these are a great way to work on strengthening your child’s lips, cheeks, and jaw stability, which are needed for various sounds in speech. You can try using different types of whistles to switch it up and make it easier or harder. Whistles that are flatter (like this one or this one) are easier to use vs. smaller or more rounded whistles. .
6. Mirror, Mirror: Kids love looking at themselves in mirrors! Use that to your advantage when you're in the bathroom, helping wash their hands or brushing their teeth and play a game in the mirror. Make silly faces, move your tongue from side to side, or alternate making kissing and then smiling faces and have your child try to imitate you. This is another good activity to strengthen oral musculature, but will also help you look at your child's motor planning. In speech, motor planning is imperative to help put sounds together to form words. If your child seems to have a hard time smoothly alternating between different faces or cannot imitate your faces at all, this could be a redflag with their motor planning abilities.
By introducing these fun activities at home, you can encourage and work on your child's oral motor development, which in turn will help their speech development!
If you are having concerns or questions about your child’s oral motor, speech, language and/or communication development reach out to us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
It's time again for our monthly segment: Favorite Toys Without Batteries! As we talked about in this post, we love toys without batteries. Below is The Speech Space's March list of great toys that don't make noise-- so that you can get your child talking more while you're playing!
1. Cariboo: One of our favorite games ever! In this game, you hide balls below an array of boxes with pictures of different objects. When you find all of the balls, the treasure chest opens-- like magic! This game is great because you can target language in so many different ways. A few ways you can play this game: have your child open boxes based on color, category, number of objects, or even give multiple descriptions to work on their understanding of complex sentences (e.g., "Open the box with a green vehicle that can fly.")
2. Disney Princess Cupcake: We always modify games when needed, and this one is no exception. There are two main ways we like to play this game to maximize working on language skills. The first way to play with your child would be to separate all cupcake pieces and then tell your child the "recipe" (from the recipe cards) or have your child give you the recipe to create your cupcakes. The second way you can play is by tossing the recipe cards and letting your child get creative by telling you how they want to make the cupcakes. This game is great for increased descriptive language (e.g., "I want the blue wrapper, tall chocolate cake, the yellow and white frosting and the pink flower topper.") and following directions.
3. Dramatic Play: Dramatic play is wonderful for increasing language in children. It's especially important for them to pretend with materials that they may or may not have experienced yet, but possibly will encounter. Doctors kits (check out this one), kitchen sets (like this one), camping and/or fishing equipment, grocery store carts and items, and restaurant toys (aprons, pretend bills, etc) are all great things for kids to get used to by pretending with them before experiencing them in real life.
5. Box of fun: This is totally made up and you can throw anything in! Think of putting in an assortment of small, unique toys your child may find interesting. Some of our boxes have a variety of windup toys (you can get a large bag on Amazon for under $15), bubbles, accordion tubes, silly putty, a spinning light up toy-- basically a bunch of weird, silly, fun things! Have your child request items by function or description or name them, they can request help using specific nouns and verbs ( e.g., "Can you help me wind up with monkey toy?"), or they can talk to you about how each thing works or feels. Cheap and easy fun is the best!
These are just a few more our favorite toys and ideas. If you missed last month's segment on our favorite toys without batteries, you can see it here! Check back on The Speech Space blog for other fun ideas, toys and games you can do with your child to help increase their language and communication development.
And as always, if you have questions or concerns about your child's speech and language, contact us at The Speech Space!