K'er strange spelling: indication of speech/hearing issue?

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I know not to expect much from my 6yo in terms of writing, but she does enjoy writing her own little stories. I notice she makes certain errors repeatedly:

 

Da for the, mudder or mutter for mother

W/R used interchangeably, ie run=wun, was=rus, etc.

 

About two years ago, she did have her tonsils/adenoids out and eardrums pierced/drained due to constantly plugged ears and hearing issues during the winter.

 

For speaking, her thirteen and fourteen sound exactly the same unless I work with her to put her tongue between her teeth for the TH sound. She reads mother as mutter. Otherwise, no real noticeable issues aside from the w/r thing that seems to be naturally fading out.

 

My question is, is any of this serious enough for intervention, or should I just keep working on things as I see them come up?

[Bookworm4]

Can she mimic the sound if you show her how to form the sound?  Or if you cover your mouth, can she tell you which sound you are making?  Does she mix any sounds besides the d/t/th and w/r?  Little Bee Speech website resources tab has a list of when you should expect certain sounds to develop at different positions in words between ages 2 - 7.  Do you have access to a speech therapist if needed?

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Can she mimic the sound if you show her how to form the sound? Or if you cover your mouth, can she tell you which sound you are making? Does she mix any sounds besides the d/t/th and w/r? Little Bee Speech website resources tab has a list of when you should expect certain sounds to develop at different positions in words between ages 2 - 7. Do you have access to a speech therapist if needed?

She can mimic if shown how.

No other mixed sounds that I can think of.

 

I will check out the website you mentioned, thank you! Speech therapy in English would be tricky, but I think I could find one if the situation really warrants it.

[eternallytired]

It sounds to me like she's just spelling the way things sound to her, which is normal for six.  And if her pronunciation is off, her spelling will be too--unless she receives specific instruction on words she mispronounces.

 

At this point, she should have the /th/ sound, and the /r/ should be close, especially in a girl.  (My ODS was in speech at 4 to learn /th/.  I was told that /r/ should develop by 7.  The speech therapist modeled the correct sound, had DS practice putting his mouth into the proper position, and then progressed from making the sound in isolation to at the beginning of a word to a word within a sentence.  Originally his sounds were really stilted, but the more he practiced, the more natural it became.  You can try working on it yourself before hunting for a therapist.)

[Farrar]

I don't know what the right path is exactly, but ds had this and it did, indeed, result in him being a terrible speller. Things still come up where it turns out he's been saying/hearing it wrong for years and thus spelling it wrong. Some of them are cute, like how he was convinced it was "suddently," but others are whole groups of sounds he still thinks of incorrectly. We had his hearing tested and it's fine. I wasn't sure if speech therapy was really warranted because he was mostly very understandable so when he was in kindy, we talked about it and made a deal to work on one sound at a time. If there was no one around but family, I would stop him and have him repeat until he had the sounds right every single time. It took maybe a couple of months per thing. By first grade, he sounded - still like a little kid, mind you, but much better, and we dropped it. There is an at home speech therapy program you can try - a friend had it but I forget the name - Speech Sounds? Something like that.

 

Anyway, now, down the line, I'm not sure if I maybe should have done more intervention or what. I don't know that he would have qualified for speech therapy yet at that age, but I also see how it deeply affected his reading and spelling. He has finally really caught up with reading at age 10, and he spells so, so much better, but I wish we had been on it more from the get go. I think doing a program like Logic of English or All About Reading (neither of which was around then) or Spalding would have been really beneficial for him at a really young age.

[RKWAcademy]

I can't offer much advice, but I have two k-ers, turning 6 next week.  DS has a speech disorder, and DD doesn't.  They both spell terribly.  If I ask them what the word is that they've written, they pronounce it normally, even though the spelling is off.  My daughter, with typical speech, more so than my son, just because she's the artisty type who loves to write little stories and notes.  Very shortly we'll start AAS. 

 

If you are concerned, ask your pediatrician for a referral for a speech pathology evaluation.  Sounds like she's developing just fine.  I can't remember exactly but there are certain sounds they don't have to have until age 6 - at least according to insurance and presumably some group of therapists in the know).  Therefore, my son's therapist can't even start working on a sound yet (I think it is "r", but we're doing it now and he's not 6, so I could be wrong). 

[Momling]

Maybe write down some minimal pairs and have her point to the one you say to her. (I'm assuming you have a similar American dialect as me so that these words either have a voiced th sound or /d/ sound). Try to make them identical except for a th or d sound:

 

mother and mutter

Then and den

Father and fodder

Rather and redder

Lathe and laid

These and Dee's

Bathing and baiting

Lather and ladder

 

If she can hear the difference, I wouldn't worry. If not, it's probably a speech perception problem and you should talk with an SLP.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Thank you for all of the good advice! I am going to try to evaluate her a bit and see if I feel like we can "at home" it or if she needs to see someone.

 

I really appreciate you all taking my question seriously and not just telling me that Kers aren't supposed to be able to spell anyway. :-).

[jar7709]

My DD has had a similar path, but is a little farther along. She had many ear infections as a toddler and her adenoids out at around age 6. She still has trouble pronouncing 'r' and 'th' at 8.5. She can hear the sound correctly and there is definite progress, her SLP is pleased and optimistic, and she now reads very well, but she is still a terrible speller. It is coming along, we are using Apples and Pears spelling which is helping. It's just a slow process though I think.

[Bookworm4]

My oldest has been in speech therapy for 2.5 years (she started a couple months after turning 5).  She has come a long way.  We are down to working on /r/ and r blends and only earlier this year did she get /th/ sounds down correctly.  In her case, she couldn't always hear a sound correctly (for example, when working on voiceless /th/, the speech therapist would cover her mouth and try to have DD tell her if she was saying a /f/ or voiceless /th/.  She couldn't hear the difference, but if she could see your mouth then she could see the difference and specify which sound was being made.  Sometimes mispronunciations form from habits from when they couldn't make the sounds correctly as well.  For example, DD said "wif" for "with" for years.  When she could finally say it correctly, it would take many reminders to stop and pronounce it correctly.  The speech therapist said that basically it would take a lot of reminders because we were having to retrain muscle memory at that point with a word she used all the time.  Once DD can say the sounds correctly, we practice saying those first isolated to certain positions in words (beginning, middle, end), next is phrases, followed by sentences, and last to develop is correct pronunciation in conversation.  Another thing the speech therapist had me do was when DD could say the sounds correctly, if I heard her say the sounds incorrectly when talking or reading, we would stop, break down the word into the correct sounds and then say the word correctly (or if we'd done that enough before then I would just correct her pronunciation and she would repeat it with the correct pronunciation).  Part of the reason for that is having her stop and say the word correctly would continue to raise her awareness of that sound and how she should be saying the word or sound.

 

There is an app for ipads or apple products called Articulation Station that was developed by a speech pathologist (you can purchase access to just specific sounds or to every sound).  My DD loves this app (her speech therapist uses it and we have it too).  I also have the book Super Star Speech: Speech Therapy Made Simple - Expanded Edition by Deborah Lott.  She is a homeschool mom who is also a trained speech therapist and wrote this book geared for homeschool families (I bought it from Amazon a year ago for around $35 if I remember correctly).

 

Both the /th/ and /r/ sounds typically develop around 6 or 7 years of age.  If she can make the sound correctly, it may be just a matter of practicing those sounds in the words she says incorrectly to raise her awareness of the correct pronounciation.  Or you could target those sounds in words and practice having her repeat after you.  At one point in time, the Little Bee Speech (author of Articulation Station app) had some free printables on her website that may be helpful as you search to see what will work best for you and your DD.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

My oldest has been in speech therapy for 2.5 years (she started a couple months after turning 5). She has come a long way. We are down to working on /r/ and r blends and only earlier this year did she get /th/ sounds down correctly. In her case, she couldn't always hear a sound correctly (for example, when working on voiceless /th/, the speech therapist would cover her mouth and try to have DD tell her if she was saying a /f/ or voiceless /th/. She couldn't hear the difference, but if she could see your mouth then she could see the difference and specify which sound was being made. Sometimes mispronunciations form from habits from when they couldn't make the sounds correctly as well. For example, DD said "wif" for "with" for years. When she could finally say it correctly, it would take many reminders to stop and pronounce it correctly. The speech therapist said that basically it would take a lot of reminders because we were having to retrain muscle memory at that point with a word she used all the time. Once DD can say the sounds correctly, we practice saying those first isolated to certain positions in words (beginning, middle, end), next is phrases, followed by sentences, and last to develop is correct pronunciation in conversation. Another thing the speech therapist had me do was when DD could say the sounds correctly, if I heard her say the sounds incorrectly when talking or reading, we would stop, break down the word into the correct sounds and then say the word correctly (or if we'd done that enough before then I would just correct her pronunciation and she would repeat it with the correct pronunciation). Part of the reason for that is having her stop and say the word correctly would continue to raise her awareness of that sound and how she should be saying the word or sound.

 

There is an app for ipads or apple products called Articulation Station that was developed by a speech pathologist (you can purchase access to just specific sounds or to every sound). My DD loves this app (her speech therapist uses it and we have it too). I also have the book Super Star Speech: Speech Therapy Made Simple - Expanded Edition by Deborah Lott. She is a homeschool mom who is also a trained speech therapist and wrote this book geared for homeschool families (I bought it from Amazon a year ago for around $35 if I remember correctly).

 

Both the /th/ and /r/ sounds typically develop around 6 or 7 years of age. If she can make the sound correctly, it may be just a matter of practicing those sounds in the words she says incorrectly to raise her awareness of the correct pronounciation. Or you could target those sounds in words and practice having her repeat after you. At one point in time, the Little Bee Speech (author of Articulation Station app) had some free printables on her website that may be helpful as you search to see what will work best for you and your DD.

Very helpful, thank you! I am going to look into that app!

[kbutton]

I will answer in a round-about way to maybe give you some ideas of things you can work on (along the lines of the minimal difference pairs suggested) to see if she is hearing the difference between the sounds. My son likely has an auditory processing disorder (hearing can be normal or not, but the brain does wonky stuff with the sounds). He has trouble hearing in noisy environments and such. His speech is a bit off but within developmental norms. When he learned to read, he was able to match sounds to letters easily, and he picked up on stuff really fast. However, it was a total education for him in how to hear/speak the language. For instance, when he spoke, he often used indistinct vowel sounds in his words. Once he could read simple words, he was stunned to find out that thin, then, and than were three separate words. He honestly thought I was trying to trick him. This kind of thing happened routinely. Over time, he's corrected a lot of his speech on his own after seeing the correct words in print. (He's 7 now.) So, maybe your child has an auditory processing issue going on, or maybe she is just young. I would not worry overmuch at this point, but I would also watch to see how things develop and consider some kind of screening for hearing if you've not done that. You can't get a full auditory processing battery this young, but you might be able to get a screening for it. My son was screened using the SCAN-III. I am not sure what would be different where you are. I believe that ear infections, fluid, etc. put a child at a much higher risk of auditory processing disorders, but I don't have a link for that right now.

This will sound way off base, but I also found that if my neck is out of alignment, I can't hear very well at all, and my ears feel plugged up. They pop a lot, like they would when changing elevation, but the popping doesn't adequately clear the muffled sound. I see a chiropractor, and my ears are much better when I'm aligned well (I should note that my neck vertebrae are in bad shape). So, depending on your take on chiropractors, that may undermine my whole narrative. :rofl: Or, if you like them, you might consider taking her in for an adjustment. My son is well adjusted and still doesn't process sound quite right. It's just another avenue if you narrow this down to an ear thing.