Speech development

[TheHeirOfSlytherin]

Ds has just turned 2 and after a very slow start with his talking, he has been chattering away for about a month now and is learning new words almost daily and can say a couple of small sentences.

One thing I have noticed though is that he does seem to be struggling with a couple of letter sounds; "star" is "dar", "clock" is "gok" and "quack" is "gak"

I can imagine those sounds would be quite difficult to say when you are learning to talk as they aren't just a S or C sound, it's "st" and "cl" and "qw" but I was just wondering if there is anything I can do to try and help him say these sounds. I read to him every night and talk to him as much as possible.

Hi

Children vary enormously in their speech development and boys can be later anyway, as an early years worker that sounds like pretty good development to me, the fact that he is saying new words, keen to talk and adding to his vocabulary is a great sign. And reading is always brilliant. You can support him further by repeating the correct pronunciation of the word, but not labouring it if you see what I mean eg if he says "there's a gok" you can say " that's right it is a clock". So he knows you've understood him and you've also modelled the correct sounds.

Hope that helps.

He sounds fine - children learn the different speech sounds in a particular order. The ones you mention are sound clusters, completely normal at this age and we wouldn't worry about those until a child is about 4 (I'm a speech therapist by the way). I'll echo what whatsinthebag says - just model back the correct pronunciation wiothout actually correcting him. He sounds as if he's doing well overall

Thank you that's very reassuring and I'm glad you have confirmed how I should respond to him. I was quite worried for a while because he was so slow to start talking, he got a few basic words mastered at around 13-15 months old but then just didn't seem interested in talking but would get so frustrated about not being understood.

Then when he did start it was as though he learned loads in a short space of time and in short sentences like "I want more" "Here it is" and "Put it there" it really is amazing to see him learn.