Chatting with so many moms of 3 year olds I realize a lot of moms have concerns about their child’s speech. They say “I can understand her but I know that she doesn’t say everything clearly.” Well, I speak VERY little Spanish but I can tell you, I know I don’t articulate the sounds correctly. There are so many sounds that I say incorrectly and inarticulately, but if I had someone consistently working with me, one sound at a time, for a period of time, I would eventually get to a point where you would think that I was raised in Mexico.
I am NOT a speech expert by any means, but I will tell you that I have seen what skilled speech therapists can do to help a child’s verbal communication grow to a place of confidence, and that is something worth fighting for when you have seen children so frustrated that they can’t be understood.
Not only is speech therapy beneficial for children who might have trouble with deficiencies in their speech, speech therapy is GREAT for ALL young children to develop clear, articulate oral language. And on top of that, the way that speech therapists work with children by “studying” letters is a great way to STUDY letters in line with nurturing brain development like we talked about yesterday.
Okay, okay, I know what you are thinking: are you telling me that I need to go hire a speech therapist?
Not necessarily, FIRST you should READ about one and learn a thing or two from an expert:
Here is her archive I think is the best place for moms to start!
For a glimpse into this site, start by reading this post:
It was the first one that I read and it hooked me all the way!
In this post, Mommy Speech talks about using a lollipop to elicit the “l” sound. I have a feeling your little one wont complain about this activity.
Heather Burbrink Photography captured this sweet picture and I had to share!
So, Today’s activity is to choose one of Mommy Speech Therapy’s “Improving Articulation” letter-sound lessons with your child just to see what fun it can be to focus on one letter-sound at a time in an age-appropriate way. This is such a good pre-reading and pre-writing experience.
Start listening carefully to your child’s speech and try to observe if they are omitting any sounds and where in the word the omission occurs (beginning, middle, or end). For example, I was recently working with a three year old that had a hard time saying the “L” sound, another who was having trouble saying the “P” sound (but only as the end of words), and many kids that have trouble with the “S” and “R” sounds. Mommy Speech has activities for all of these sounds 🙂
