6 year old speech- ‘immature’ sounding compared to peers

[Speech41]

My 6 year old daughter has what I would call immature sounding speech. Not the content but how she actually sounds when she speaks. She had issues with her R sounds but that has now came along with age.
it’s hard to explain, it’s not an accent exactly but she definitely says words differently to how everyone else does and when corrected she struggles to say them the ‘right’ way. We did go to speech and language and she suggested it was ‘youtube’ which she doesn’t even watch. No other diagnosis or behavioural issues it’s just how the words sound coming out. Can anyone offer any advice?

Was that private or NHS SLT? Either way, I’d be inclined to get a second opinion.

My six year old is very similar and we’re around to go down the private route.

It was private

I’d just find another SLT and ask them what they think.

What does her teacher think?

Mine had weak mouth muscles and had not stored certain sounds properly in his brain due to a very slight earlier hearing loss. All due to adenoids and sleep apnoe, and Kindergarten teachers wearing masks when he could hear properly (he’s bilingual, his problems were stronger in the other language). He too sounded immature.

As well as systematically going through all his missing or wrong sounds with a SALT, we did a lot of mouth strengthening exercises. Drinking smoothies through a straw. Blowing bubbles. Blowing up balloons. Eating a long salt stick (twiglet-like thing) without using his hands. Sucking a sweet until there was nothing left. Chewing gum.

Do you mean mispronouncing words or sounding "babyish"?

If it's mispronouncing words, then ask for referral to SALT. It may take some time, although sometimes they have a general session in school round here, which children can be added to.

If it's sounding "babyish" then she'll probably grow out of it. Is she smaller/younger than her peers perhaps? In which case it may be learnt behaviour, because it gets her a position in the group.
She may actually not be doing it when just with peers as well. Ds used to sometimes sound really babyish in the way he spoke. It took me some time to realise that he didn't sound like that when talking to friends. It gradually reduced down at home over time, and only appeared when he was scared or stressed for ages.

Is the younger sounding speech impacting how easy she is to understand or is it worrying her? If the answer is no to both then I’d say it’s not an issue for SaLT.

it’s very normal to have only just got an r sound at 6 so I wouldn’t use that as a reflection something might be wrong.

For longer tricky words a good strategy is clapping out the syllables together as you say them eg caterpillar = ‘cat - a - pil - er’. This will help her tune unto all the individual sounds in the words.