as dd3 speech prgresses in leaps and bounds, i feel for dd2 who still struggles

[misdee]

now dd2 speech has come on massively in the last year. she is getting easier to understabnd, but still gets very muddled and some people cant understand her. and each day the gap closes in as dd3 is catching up fast and is a real chatterbox. i find her easier to understand than dd2 at times.

how do other people cope? i am not comparing the two at all, well maybe i am, but i am finding this so hard at times. I have to spend so long deciephering what dd2 is saying, its gets worse when i dont understand and then she gets works up and even more unclear, so you have to calm her back down etc etc. yet dd3 will utter simple sentances loud and clear and i can get it first time.

there is 2.5years between them.

I do tend to assume he'll have sorted 'ssss' and 'shhh' by the time he's 30! Hope I'm right.
Misdee, I think my ds is not at all bad really, but still I often get that look. I think some people are just not very good at deciphering. My dad was terrible. Ds would chat away for ages, and at the end my dad would just look a me haplessly with bafflement written all over his face!

School may make a difference to your dd2 , misdee, and your dedicated input.

We don't have that with speech but at ds' recent OT sessions the difficulties ds has were all the more marked by the ease with which dd coudl just copy the exercises, without a second thought, when he had been hesitating and wobbling. ds is attempting to ride a bike again (he's 9) but I'm sure with just a little enocuragement dd would do so sooner (she's almost 6). I don't want to hold her back , but nor do I want it undermine ds' often fragile confidence. I can already see her feeling inhibited by his behaviour.

aloha, i am aiming for 25yrs old.

i really do hope that school helps her more. i mean there is marked improvement from a year ago when almost everything was mumbo jumbo. so i knowa year can make a huge amount of difference.

want to sticjk my head back in the sand, but know its pointless.

Aloha, DS2 finally "got" the shhhh sound about half a term into Y1 (and CH which used to be an odd T sound) still can't manage R and should get to the top of the SALT list by July.

He compares unfavourably speech wise to DS1 who spoke early and clearly but I guess it's easier to deal with as he's younger.

School said they weren't worried about his speech but I insisted the SALT referral go ahead as I don't want him ending up like Jonathan Woss!

That's interesting Soupy. Ds also has a touch of the Jonathan Ross about his 'r's. The Aspergery stuff like not looking at the person he's talking to and muttering inaudibly doesn't really help either! But the content of his speech can be amazing, I think.

no problems with Rrrr, but problems with b, d, s, shh, ch, and a few others.

gaggy sounds so sweet though.

Sparkly is right about school.

A friends child was hardly saying anything at 3 and now (4.5) she is doing so well

WRT how to cope with chidlren's differing skills - DS1 had SALT and at one pont dd (2 yrs younger) said some things clearer eg "black" for her at 2 was "bwa" for him at 4. But I took comfort from the fact that his sentences and ideas were much more complex and I am sure the same is true for DD2 Misdee.

Now they are 7 and 5 and she is frankly a much better reader than him (this has been an area he struggles) so I do sympathise with you. What I try to do is point up their individual strengths and make much of those. Is this worth a try - I am sure DD2 is much better at eg bike riding or swimming or numbers.

WRT to s sounds - DS2 has a friend whose name starts with S and he couldn't say it in September - he would say he played with Bally not Sally. But now (he's just 4) he says it fine.

DS1 struggled for so long with c which he would say t. But he's got it now (some time ago actually) and that's great. I do feel for you, really I do. Well done for doing the grimmer than grim SALT work.

I did spend some time with DS2 making him watch how I made the Shhhh sound and getting him to repeat it. When I knew he could actually make the sound, he used to keep saying the tongue twister "she sells sea shells on the sea shore" which he liked. It didn't help when DS1 kept saying it clearer and quicker though... We then moved onto "cheetahs choose chocolate chips". R, however, is a sound I have only ever heard him make at all since a couple of weeks ago. He still sounds odd when pronouncing Shhh/ssss and Ch sounds though, not wrong, just odd. Probably only I can hear that though.

Despite the pronunciation problems, he is very articulate with a fantastic vocabulary and, luckily, no aspergers stuff thrown into the mix. I think this is why school weren't worried about him.

I used to have to listen very carefully to what he said to decipher the words in context. I think he spoke clearly but with some letter sounds wrong IYSWIM. He wasn't indistinct but words sounded wrong.

By far my favourite mispronunciation was when he came up to me and very proudly said "W is for Wino!"