Speech problem - will he grow out of it?

[Rafaella]

My five year old ds was slow to talk and still cannot pronounce the 's' and 'f' sounds. For example he will say 'nake' rather than snake. He has had his hearing checked which was fine and had an initial assessment with a speech therapist at 4 years who said she did not need to see him again as she thought he would catch up. Because of this I haven't worried about his language but his teachers have picked up on it and are slightly concerned. Now I don't know whether to ask for another assessment or to hope he will be okay in his own time. I don't want to make a big issue of something that he will grow out of. Does anyone have any experience of this?

I'd definitely ask for another assessment. At age 5 my ds1 could not make a whole raft of sounds (s, z, sh, f, v, th, c, g, j, ...), but made great progress once he got weekly SALT. (Speech and language therapy).

ask the school if they have a community SALT that can come and take a look at him. they may not need to see him regularly but they may offer some advice to help build his language skills.

The school have said they will do this - I don't know how soon though. Do you have any idea what kind of things they do? If I ask him to try and pronounce the 'ss' sound he can't or won't try. I know I shouldn't correct him but what should I do?

Hi Rafaella

If the school can put you in contact with the SALT team, they will answer your questions. You've waited five years. Don't panic now!

From what I know of SALT, they encourage you to validate the good things, rather than correct the errors, (although don't fall into the trap of calling snakes 'nakes' yourself!) They will work through games, making the sounds he needs to work on fun.

Good luck

VTM