Pronounciation help for 3yo

[Twoboos]

DD2 is 3.5yo, and overall her speech is pretty good. Large vocab, full complex sentences, etc.

However, there are still a couple of letters she doesn't pronounce. R and L are still W's. (Ex: Rags = Wags, sleep = sweep)

At the fall and spring parent/teacher conferences, I brought this up and both teachers said it was fine, no need to worry yet. And I *love* the way she talks, it is so cute!! But, I feel I should be working on it.

I don't know if this needs a speech eval. But I would like to work on this a little with her at home. Any online resources for this? Off and on I've tried to get her to make the L sound in a fun way - "Say LALALA!" and I sing a little song or something. Or having her touch her tongue to her front of teeth/back of teeth/cheeks and seeing different sounds.

If I wanted an eval, I think I would have to start w/the ped b/c the school says she's fine.

Thoughts/resources? TIA!

[brittone2]

DD2 is 3.5yo, and overall her speech is pretty good. Large vocab, full complex sentences, etc.

However, there are still a couple of letters she doesn't pronounce. R and L are still W's. (Ex: Rags = Wags, sleep = sweep)

At the fall and spring parent/teacher conferences, I brought this up and both teachers said it was fine, no need to worry yet. And I *love* the way she talks, it is so cute!! But, I feel I should be working on it.

I don't know if this needs a speech eval. But I would like to work on this a little with her at home. Any online resources for this? Off and on I've tried to get her to make the L sound in a fun way - "Say LALALA!" and I sing a little song or something. Or having her touch her tongue to her front of teeth/back of teeth/cheeks and seeing different sounds.

If I wanted an eval, I think I would have to start w/the ped b/c the school says she's fine.

Thoughts/resources? TIA!

Most SLPs do not worry about articulation (essentially their word for pronunciation) much at all at that age. If the teachers aren't worried, I wouldn't worry.

DS still substituted "Y" sounds for initial "L" sounds, and "F" sounds for "SW" sounds (so a swing was a "fing") until he was close to 4, as did several of his little friends. It self corrected.

As long as most people understand most of what your 3.5 year old is saying, I would not worry. A few substitutions are totally normal IME, and most SLPs I've worked w/ said they don't worry about articulation until close to school age (meaning like age 4-5).

You can certainly talk to your ped, but I doubt you'd find an SLP that was concerned.

[egoldber]

When Sarah was in speech therapy, our SLP said what Beth (brittone2) said, that they do not begin to become concerned about articulation until age 4 at minimum. In the absence of other speech or developmental issues, I would not be concerned.

[mom2binsd]

I'm am an SLP, those sounds are still developing and those are very typical errors for her age.

She sounds like she's doing great!

[Twoboos]

OoooooooKKKKKKKAY! <deep exhale> I feel so much better now!!

Thank you guys. It's one of those things that I'm sure she's fine, but if I think about it I get nervous.

And yes, articulation was the word I could not think of to save my life. :ROTFLMAO: Some English major I am!

[o_mom]

I found this chart to be helpful for checking progress:

http://www.isd742.org/ecassessment/assets/speechsounddevelopmentchart.pdf

[bnme]

Is she mostly understood by others? I would go by that more than specific letters. I am wary of the milestone chart for letter sounds. Because there are more common mispronunciations and then ones that can be more indicative of a problem. It is not as simple as what letters they haven't mastered, but how they are producing the sound.

I had my DS evaluated around 4 and it turned out he has a significant articulation delay. So if you have any doubts I'd get an opinion. But as SLP pp said, her pronunciations seem more common (For example my DS replaces 's' with 't', and 'f' sounds like 'p').

[DrSally]

I've heard that the R's and L's are the two hardest ones to pronounce. DS still has problems with them.

[anamika]

Not an expert on any of this stuff so I'm glad everyone thinks it's normal. But I wanted to say that sounds so cute. Hope you're getting tons of footage.
I'm probably a bad Mommy but I never correct DD which she says teached, growed and other cute stuff. I figure she will get it eventually but I will not get to hear her say it for too long. Maybe I should be looking for the paper bag smilie!