To any speech therapists out there

[agora1]

I am a speech therapist but my child development is a bit rusty. My 3;10 year old has: intermittent backing; on clusters eg. /fr/ she goes to /sw/; /th/ to /g/; /j/ to /g/. Sorry I don't have time to hunt for the phonetic symbols but that should make sense.

My main issue is the backing. I know by this age it should be resolved. I've made some gentle efforts to work on it but perhaps should be trying harder. I'm wondering whether I should be referring her now?

(I'm a bit rusty too!)

I'd say she is still young but a little input from you doing some listening games using minimal pairs (lotto type games) wouldn't do any harm if she finds them fun.

Thanks, she has started some phonics type work at nursery which she is enjoying but I think her speech problems are making these difficult for her e.g. identifying the correct initial sound in a word.

I can try some listening games, but I am a bit wary of doing too much and she becomes resistant.

I keep hoping it's just developmental and she'll improve before therapy is necessary.

Hi - I'm not rusty - was assessing phonology this very day! I agree that it sounds fine at the moment - is she only backing on clusters? If it's only in clusters I wouldn't be at all concerned at the moment. If she's consistently backing single consonants (t, d, f, s etc) then I would be more concerned. "th" and "j" are not expected to be correct at 3;10, though /g/ is an unusual substitution. I wouldn't be too worried though, especially if it's intermittent - I think a lot of children have unusual substitutions in some words. My DD says /m/ instead of /f/ in some words, but in others they're fine, so I'm not too concerned at the moment.
If you're worried, then as agora1 says, you could do some minimal pair games (but not if she becomes resistant). Otherwise, just model the words back correctly and silghtly emphasise the sound at the beginning for her to hear. I wouldn't work on any of that until at least 4;6 or older. Hope that helps.

Sorry - when I said agora1, I meant DaftMaul!

Thanks

My message above wasn't very clear. She backs on single consonants too e.g. table - kable but television is television. There is some cluster reduction and substitutions e.g. frog to swog.

Hope that makes more sense. (You wouldn't think I communicate for a living!)

I think the thing to look for is how stimulable she is for the error processes she makes. Will she repeat from your model when you do it in a gentle and indirect way? and also, can she recognise the errors she makes in other people? i.e if you called a frog a swog, would she find this funny or call you silly? I personally think if I a child has good auditory skills and accurate sound storage, articulation often sorts itself out. Overall though, I wouldn't worry about cluster errors in a child under 5 and the backing you describe seems inconsistent.
If you want to do something, definitiely the playful listening games is the way to go. i-spy with sounds, not letters; find things starting with 't' in the supermarket etc

She actually just repeated frog beautifully there after some swog/frog comparisons, so yes I think she can recognise the difference with other people. The backing in particular she finds difficult however, she just accepted my guk for duck and cannot repeat after a model. Eye spy she finds extremely challenging and is very poor at.

Everyone, including my husband thinks I should hold off on a referral so I'll play some of the above suggested games and hold off. She moves nursery in August and I suspect her new nursery will be faster to refer than her current one so we may go down the therapy route later in the year.

Thank you for all your help. I'll get ready for work and go and treat some adults now. At least I know what I'm doing there!