Speech question?

[Amy loves Bud]

At what age would it concern you for a child to make a "w" sound instead of an "r" sound?

[milovany]

Maybe 10ish.

[Nicole M]

I can't answer that specific question, but I can share a very odd tidbit I learned recently about speech therapy, just to tuck in your pocket.

 

My 16 yo son is a serious singer, dreaming of choral conducting as a college major (I was thinking only of boys at that age) and is working at an old folks' home serving dinner to earn money to pay for voice lessons next fall. Since braces and chronic sinus issues, we've found it increasingly difficult to understand what the heck that kid is saying. He is frustrated because he has to repeat himself often, and jiminy, everyone wants to be understood. So I got a referral from his ENT to have him assessed for speech issues.

 

On the phone making the appointment, the nurse first is asking me all kinds of questions about learning disabilities. I finally said, "he doesn't have learning issues, we just can't understand a thing he says."

 

"Oh, well why did wait this long to bring him in?"

 

"We understood him before."

 

"That's too bad. Because your insurance will only cover speech therapy for children under the age of 7."

 

"But we understood everything he said at 7!"

 

Now I ask you, does that make sense? We did have him assessed, and he does have some issues, and now we have to practice this stuff with him and it's pretty much torture. We don't really know what we're doing. His problem is mainly with /s/ being slurred.

 

The good thing that has come of this is that at his work he gets lots of practice; "soup or salad?".

 

So. If you do think there is a problem, by all means, talk to your pediatrician early.

 

Good luck! I hope you get good feedback here.

[Amy loves Bud]

Wow about the insurance! And lol about the "soup or salad" comment! That must be very frustrating for him, but I can see where those things would conspire to mess with your speech. Has it affected his singing?

 

This is not my kid I'm talking about, it's the 8 year old who's been staying with us this weekend while his parents travel. His mom has mentioned it to me, but I guess I just haven't spent much time with him in a while, so I didn't realize that it's pretty significant, and to top it off he is very cute with blonde curly hair and small for his age, so it's easy to think of him as much younger than he really is.

 

Anyway, I was curious what those of you who have dealt with this (or who are speech therapists) have to say about it.

[Nicole M]

Wow about the insurance! And lol about the "soup or salad" comment! That must be very frustrating for him, but I can see where those things would conspire to mess with your speech. Has it affected his singing?

 

 

He mainly sings in a group, his choir, and keeps pretty quiet at home, so I'm not quite sure. Curiously, the voice instructor on the campus where I work part time also has a bit of a mush mouth, and I can hear some of the same issues both in his singing and his speech. So my guess is that yes, it probably does affect his singing to some degree. However, he does tend to open his mouth more when he sings than when he speaks, and that's another contributing factor, speaking with virtually closed mouth. Also, his conductor is super focused on enunciation, understandably. So perhaps when he sings he's clear.

 

In the case of your friend's child, all the curly, blond haired boys I have known who pronounced their r's as w outgrew it. I would not be concerned, personally, at 8, unless it was very difficult to understand him.

[Nicole M]

what happened here? did I kill the thread with my "soup or salad" story? :blink:

 

surely there must be speech therapy people here...?

[BamaTanya]

Though I would certainly seek professional screening before that . . . just to reassure me that my dc was on track.

 

We had a couple of our dc screened at 3-4 because they were difficult to understand. One was a "wait and see" and gradually improved without intervention. The other was a "seek further screening" and failed a hearing screening. Yikes.

 

Anyway, he COULD hear (when he didn't have fluid in his ears) and he had learned some sounds WRONG (probably because of the almost-continual fluid). He started getting speech therapy through the public schools almost immediately. And we saw almost immediate improvement.

 

While I wouldn't panic, I would certainly want to rule out any problems (hearing deficits, etc.) that might be causing the difficulties. It was a relief to know he WAS having trouble, there weren't any permanent problems, and help was available.

 

I don't know how accurate this chart is, but I've run across several and they all seem pretty similar:

 

http://www.talkingchild.com/speechchart.html

 

Blessings!

[Quiver0f10]

I would encourage her to seek an evaluation now rather than wait. We waited to get my son ST, thinking he would outgrow it :confused:, and I regret it now and wish we would have started when he was much younger.

[Twinmom]

My twins are in speech therapy and the therapist says not to worry about the w/r thing until at least 7-8 yrs old.

[jacqui in mo]

Speech therapist here. Sorry didn't see your question until today. 8 yo is when most children should have acquired the main /r/ sound at the beginning of words. He should start actively working on correcting it now. Jacqui

[Jean in Newcastle]

For many children the sounds become a lot clearer if they slow down their speech. My dd is one that this helps - she is speaking so quickly that her speech problems get all slurred together and then good luck understanding her! Often in singing your "speech" is lengthened as you spend time on the note so a speech problem might not be as noticeable.

[Amy loves Bud]

This is all very helpful information. This boy spent Saturday till today with us, so I was really confronted with his speech. When his mom mentioned it before I didn't think it was that big of a deal. But listening to it for several days, there are definitely some issues and I think she is right to be concerned.

 

Thanks for your input and experience!