A speech problem?

[cameroonmama]

Can anyone offer me any advice - I have a ds who is 2.7 and has a fantastic range of vocab, great grammar and imagination and talks non stop. However he does not seem to be able to pronounce s, f, th properly. S and th become y ie yoos for shoes, f becomes w ie wish for fish. Naturally we can understand him tho sometimes it takes a while for us all to work out exactly what he is saying. I am worried he will start to become more frustrated by this. Is this a problem or is it just regular 2-3 yo speech development?
I can't ask a HV as I am not in the UK but will be back in Jan.
Anyone else's children had the same problem?

one of my DTs does similar things, a lispy sort of a s/f combination rather than the y that you mention but also can't do cr/gr sound very well, so green is been, crisp is pisp (her uncle chris isn't v impressed!!) but she is getting better at it and I'm not unduly worried, she'll be 3 next month.

Moondog will be able to tell you for definite - but afaik all that you describe is perfectly normal for his age. I know that the "th" sound is one that many children don't master until they are 7.

If you mirror back the words correctly, "look mummy, my yoos" - "oh yes, you've found your shoes!", but don't actually correct him, you should be fine

LOL though at Uncle Pis!

LOL earlysbird at poor uncle Pis! Thanks for both your comments, I feel better now and i'm sure he will grow out of it, tbh i find it quite cute at the moment..

To add to the confusion he often throws in a french word or two (we are in a bilingual environment)and sometimes I think he enjoys trying to make us guess what he is saying

LMAO poor Uncle Chris!!!

Are you in France?? I am we have just moved here

My son would sound b instead of f so when we went to a local tumble time class he would scream baster baster while running around the gym and all the mothers would look me, thankfully i explained he meant faster

Could be normal development, but ds is 6.5 and he has been having speech therapy since 4. We have finally just 'cracked' the f sound, and s is the last sound he is working on (also he couldn't sound out g, v, k or l, but is OK with those now).

helen - we are in Cameroon, West Africa. It is a bilingual country but we are in the francophone part. DD who is 5 is now bilingual, french at school and english at home and ds is on his way!

Do you all speak french already?

As for ds speech I guess I should keep an eye on it and see if it gets better over the next year.

I have no idea what the correct answer is to your question but I do know as someone else has said that "th" is one of the later sounds to develop.

My DD is nearly 8 and is currently having speech therapy. So far she has been doing "s" & "sh" and is now doing "f", "th" & "thr"

Can you try so get him to do things like making a sssssssss sounds and pretending to be a snake to start trying to get "s" ? When they do "sh" their top jaw has to go further forwards. One thing we found with DD when she started Physio a few years ago (she has dyspraxia) is that her tongue wasn't moving properly, it wouldn't go side to side and up and down properly. The Physio suggested putting a blob of jam or something either side of her mouth and above and below it and try to get her to lick it off, therefore encouraging her tongue muscles to move.

Hiya
the Cameroonmama sort of gives it away in my defence it was late and I was tired.

It is hard when you have a worry about your childs development and cant talk to a health visitor just to check it out.

We dont speak french well yet, both dd's go to a toddler group and after christmas will be left there for two mornings or afternoons a week hopefuly they will very quickly pick up the language. Here they start school at 3 and can start before that doing mornings dd1 who is 2 and 6 months now could start in January but Im not sure Im ready for that!!

I hope your ds speech sorts itself out

jodee and kittypickle - it seems the f and s problem is quite common? What age did you first notice it? I try quite often to get him to pretend to be a snake (involving me, him and dd wriggling along floor on our tummies ) and he plays along then twigs why we are doing it and refuses to carry on! I don't want to draw too much attention to it..

Love the jam idea tho, we could all do that together.

LOL Helen, I did think the name was quite obvious but was being polite dd was 18mths with no french when we got here and went every morning to garderie from the age of 2, she refused to speak french until she was nearly 3.5 she simply was very quiet at the garderie and nodded and pointed at things! Now you can't shut her up! ds has spent all his life here and changes between the two languages but is much clearer in english he also goes to a garderie every morning and loves it. It is such an advantage for them to have two languages. Good luck with your two I'm sure they will pick it up quickly.