Pronouncing the letter 'L', 2.5 yo DS

[Fazerina]

I wonder how long it's considered 'normal' to have some trouble finding the correct pronounciation for certain sounds..? My DS is 2.5 and trilingual (well mostly just bilingual at the moment, as he doesn't get much exposure to daddy's language, as he works long hours). Anyway, I don't think this has to do with the fact that he speaks more than one language, as he seems to have the same problem in all the languages. In English he says things "cwubhouse" (for clubhouse, in Mickey Mouse) and pway (for play), I can't think of others in English right now, but he has others in my language. Also now that I think of it, he also says "bwead" for bread and " I bwoke it" (I broke it) so I suppose his "R" isn't great either (to be fair, the letter "R" is pronounced sharp in my language and I seem to remember several kids having trouble with this even at school age when growing up, so I'm not too concerned).

Otherwise his speech is quite clear also to others (other than myself and DH) so I think his doing well, albeit his speech development has been a bit on the slow side.

I wonder if there's anything in particular I should be doing to help him with these sounds (without coming across as overbearing..). Or is this one of those things that will just fall into place on its own in time as he learns more speech?

Hehe, uups sorry for the typos and poor grammmar (too many mistakes to start correcting..) !

I wouldn't worry too much, 'R' is quite a difficult letter and often the last sound spoken correctly (certainly in one half of my background) and I think if at 2.5 he's only struggling with 2 sounds he's doing well. I thinks it's also fairly common for multilingual children to develop a little more slowly vocabulary wise at first - they might have the same number of different words, but those words in more than one language so mean the same thing iykwim.

Just keep modelling correct pronunciation and encouraging him to talk/try new words.

(I grew up speaking 2 very different languages fluently and a third almost fluently, remembering the correct sounds for each language can be confusing at first, but is soon becomes second nature.)

My (one language) 2.7yo dd can't say those sounds either, I think it's pretty normal at this age. She will say 'nook, mummy!' (look mummy) and calls lunch 'munch' which is pretty cute. In the middle of words she tends to use a 'y' sound instead of 'l'. It sounds like he's doing just fine to me.

Hi, My 3.3yr old DD is also tri/bilingual and there are several sounds she is unable to pronounce. 'r' is definitely one of them, and she also has trouble with j/sh/ch and at times subtitutes 's' for 'sh'. She also tends to change 'th' both voiced and unvoiced, with 's' and 'z' or 'f' and 'v'. This last one is a feature of her other language, so I'm not too concerned, but I wanted to at least let you know that you're far from alone! I know that my DH also had trouble with 'r' as a child and I think it might just take her a bit longer.

She used to stutter her final letters, but grew out of this my around 2yrs 8 months, so I'm planning to wait til she's around 4/4.5 before worrying too much. I could be completely wrong with this approach, but hopefully if so someone here who knows more on the subject will come and let me know!

dd isn't bilingual but definitely said gween etc at 2.5. I can't remember when it stopped but it was probably around 4, she's now 4.5 and definitely doesn't do it any more

DS is nearly three and still uses v for th and y for l (so look at that! becomes yook at vat!) - I'm not concerned. I think you can focus too much on consonant sounds that they will get eventually. If they can make themselves understood by third parties by the time they're 3 then it's fine.

Hello everyone and thank you for taking the time to reply.

I can see now what I had already assumed, that this is fairly common. Hopefully DS will grow out of it at his own pace.