Learning letter sounds and speech issues

[LolaT]

My littlest just turned four. My two older kids knew all their letters and probably most of the letter sounds by this time without any intervention from me. (One went to preschool, the other learned his letter sounds by eating alphabet cookies because he was allergic to all other snacks!).

 

DS4 doesn't know the letters and I'm thinking it may be time I start formally teaching him the letters and letter sounds. He has a bit of a speech issue and does not form some letter sounds correctly. It's not enough to qualify for special services at this point.  I'm wondering, if I should work more with him on pronouncing words correctly that he has trouble with or just going on with the letter sounds (some of which, he can't make).

 

He is quite the talker and although he is aware that he has speech issues, it doesn't deter him. However, if we make a point to correct him too frequently, I can tell, he becomes more self conscious and I feel that he might decide it's easier not to talk if he can't produce sounds correctly.

[4KookieKids]

My son (4.5) can't make several letter sounds either. He's deficient enough of them that we do qualify for services, but I'm not sure that that has much bearing on the situation. I would encourage you to continue working with him, but in a very low-key way, and definitely not to the point of frustration.

 

For instance, we've been focusing on f and v sounds, because, with proper coaching about lip and teeth placement, he *can* actually produce those -- though it takes concentrated effort each time. So throughout the day, I try to just get him to re-say words with f's and v's when he says them incorrectly, but I'll only correct him once or twice in a five minute span usually.

 

On the other hand, he cannot for the life of him say anything resembling k or g, and no amount of coaching on our part can get anything even close, and it's frustrating for him when we try. So we revisit those sounds every few months, playing around with making "coughing noises" to try to get him to find those sounds in the back by the throat, but if he can't get it, we let it drop again. There are several other sounds that are somewhere in the middle (sometimes he can get them by luck, it seems, but he can't seem to reproduce them at will) that I think we'll work on down the road as well.

 

I've noticed that after making an effort of f and v for the last 6 weeks, he's starting to take the initiative and correct himself some, which I find really encouraging. 

 

PS. As an aside, you weren't clear if you've had his hearing evaluated, but that should definitely be the very first thing you do if you're unsure. We knew that wasn't an issue with my son, because when we would teasingly talk to him about his "Dusty Top-topper" (we thought it was cute the way he said Crophopper), he would get very upset with us and respond with "No, Dad! His name isn't Dusty Top-topper! His name is Dusty Top-topper!!" This had us laughing pretty hard, but it was absolutely clear to him that *we* were saying top-topper, but *he* was saying "crophopper".

[HS Mom in NC]

We noticed my middle daughter's hearing loss when we started letter sounds with her.( We didn't do letter names first for all the reasons Ruth Beechick explains in Homestart in Reading.)  She didn't need professional intervention for reading or speech, but we had to make a few adjustments when it came to phonics. 

[LolaT]

deanna1ynne, that sounds a lot like my son. Yes, his hearing has been tested and he used to do exactly the same thing if we repeated something back to him the way he said it, he get exasperated with us because we weren't saying it right! It was hilarious. .

 

 

I feel like I've just been waiting so far, to see what he picks up on his own and also kind of waiting for his speech to improve more on it's own like it has been for the past couple of years. But, he really is showing a lot of interest lately in learning the letter sounds and reading. He often picks up books or other written material without pictures and pretends to read them.  Otherwise, I might be happy to just keep waiting some more, but I can see he feels a bit brushed aside on this topic.

 

 

 

[MistyMountain]

.

[Crimson Wife]

Lindamood-Bell LiPS is a good program to use with kids who have phonemic awareness issues but as it's fairly expensive I would wait until the child is kindergarten aged. Some kids are naturally "late bloomers".

I was keeping an eye on my DS because he'd had articulation disorder. I had actually just contacted a SLP to inquire about the Fast ForWord program when made a HUGE breakthrough at 4 1/2. He was reading a couple months later.

Youngest DD I'm keeping an eye on as well. Her articulation is not too bad but she'll do things like substitute letters when repeating words back to me. For example, the other day she saw a piece of kale that I was about to cook, and called it "broccoli". I said, "No, that's kale." She repeated: "tail". I said, "no, kale with a 'k'. /k/ /k/ kale." She repeated: "/k/ /k/ tail." If she is still having issues like this in the fall when she enters kindergarten, I think I'll start LiPS with her at home.

Here is the link to LiPS: http://www.ganderpublishing.com/LiPS-Kit-Fourth-Edition.html

[LolaT]

Lindamood-Bell LiPS is a good program to use with kids who have phonemic awareness issues but as it's fairly expensive I would wait until the child is kindergarten aged. 

 

Wow, that is expensive but thanks for the link.  Maybe I can try to look for some mouth picture cards and borrowing ideas from it.

[Tanikit]

My DD3 cannot pronounce all sounds but can recognise all the letters and does know their sounds - if I ask her to point to C (the phonetic sound of C) then she does even though she pronounces that sound as "t". She says "w" as "y" but knows both y and w and she pronounces these sounds incorrectly all the time. She was at one point not saying a single blend correctly, but that has improved with time. If you want to teach letter sounds then teach them and maybe work on speech as a separate skill - you need to find out what sounds it is that are causing a problem in order to work on them and you also need to know if it is an oral issue and motor issue or if the child is not hearing properly and does not have comprehension - both of those are treated differently.

 

My DD is still young, but it is noticeable - because of the progress with the blends and other letters she was not pronouncing correctly and because she is mostly now understandable, I just work with her myself and have not had her at a speech therapist, but if it continues with no improvement I will probably take her at some point. However as far as letter sounds go - she can recognise them all and make some attempt to say them all - the ones she can pronounce she says correctly and the ones she cannot pronounce correctly she says the same incorrect pronunciation every time.

[boscopup]

I found that working on letter sounds helped with the speech issues. We also pursued speech therapy through the school, and while he was capable of making all the sounds that were age appropriate for a 3 year old (his age at that time), he was unintelligible enough to qualify for services anyway. If you haven't had an actual evaluation done, I'd recommend it. They don't just go by what sounds the kid can make, but they also go by how well people both in his family and outside the family can understand his speech. I knew my son was making huge progress when my parents mentioned that they could finally understand him! :D

 

We still sometimes confuse some sounds in reading, like f/th. He had some issues with m/n for a while as well (that was a specific sound he had problems with in speech - he'd say "nail" for "mail", and "nolk" for "milk", yet he could say "mama", so it wasn't an issue with the /m/ sound but that he wasn't hearing which sound was used for certain words).

[Kathryn]

I found that working on letter sounds helped with the speech issues. We also pursued speech therapy through the school, and while he was capable of making all the sounds that were age appropriate for a 3 year old (his age at that time), he was unintelligible enough to qualify for services anyway. If you haven't had an actual evaluation done, I'd recommend it. They don't just go by what sounds the kid can make, but they also go by how well people both in his family and outside the family can understand his speech. I knew my son was making huge progress when my parents mentioned that they could finally understand him! :D

We still sometimes confuse some sounds in reading, like f/th. He had some issues with m/n for a while as well (that was a specific sound he had problems with in speech - he'd say "nail" for "mail", and "nolk" for "milk", yet he could say "mama", so it wasn't an issue with the /m/ sound but that he wasn't hearing which sound was used for certain words).

My son also made significant gains in articulation once he began reading. It was like he wasn't quite sure what the sounds were supposed to be. I can kind of understand that because of how I felt watching shows like Dora with him. Since I didn't know Spanish, some of the words I was hearing incorrectly and since they don't write it out, I'd then say it wrong. But, if I saw it written in conjunction with hearing it, I could reproduce it without problem.

[kentuckymom]

My 3 year old DD is a lot like Tanikit's 3 year old DD. She can't correctly produce the sound for every letter, but she recognizes every sound and makes an attempt to produce them. She DOES receive speech therapy, and right now she's working on putting ending sounds on words. One strategy her therapist is using includes spelling out the word and pointing out the consonant on the end. DD KNOWS that "cat" should not be pronounced /ca/, so she makes more of an effort to pronounce the /t/ when she sees it. The therapist says that she normally does this for elementary age kids, not preschoolers, but, since her literacy is advanced (to my great surpise - we've really done nothing formal to teach her), this is a method that works. So, yes, kids can learn letter sounds even if they can't pronounce them and, yes, with some kids, learning letter sounds can help with speech.

[Korrale]

My son has an articulation issue. But he can read phonetically. He was in early intervention due to speech.
I would definitely go forth and teach letter sounds, not the names.. Letter names are for spelling. Letter sounds are for reading. Learning letter sounds helped my son's speech a lot because he was having to work to articulate each sound with a pictorial representation.