How clear is your 3(ish) YO's speech?

[Jannt86]

My dd is 33MO. It seems every time I worry about her talking she then has a burst and I wonder why I was so worried. She didn't really babble until 11MO. She was talking 3 word sentences by about 21MO and things have really exploded since then. She talks conversationally in loooooong sentences and basically.never shuts up She asks questions but doesn't ask 'why' yet. She can also talk pretty well about things that have happened or are going to happen. She's also very social and has friends at nursery and was early to reach social milestones such as pointing/waving/playing peepo. However I'd say she still isn't fantastic at making eye contact or mimicking. She is very helpful and sensible and caring and loving but doesn't like anyone to tell her how to do something lol. If she gets wind that I'm remotely trying to teach her something or even encourage something she either switches off or I think deliberately answers me wrong or makes a completely irrelevent statement to try and change the subject lol

Anyway... her word count to say she was slow to start talking is I think pretty good. I have listed ones she uses in conversation (not lyrics to songs etc) and I got at least 500 then got bored so I reckon there's easily 100 more than that. However her speech is still really unclear. I reckon she can actually make most sounds but she's inconsistent with using them in her words which makes the speech unclear if that makes sense. Eg she says just with the j sound but jelly comes out delly and jump comes out 'ump. She also misses the first and last letters from a lot of her words still.

Does this sound on track and in keeping with other people's kids this age? I've told myself I'll give her til at least 3 until I flag it up. I just wanted ideas of what is typical at this age though.

Also does anyone have any tips for how to encourage pronounciation in a kid who's not massively keen on eye contact or copying

TIA x

In addition, hearing was checked at 11MO and no issues found and her grammer is reasonably good. She sometimes mixes stuff up but puts pleurals and 'ing at the end of sentences etc

Bump

How much of her speech can you understand? I went to see a speech therapist with my DS just ahead of his 3rd birthday as I was concerned about his unclear speech. His vocab was fine. There were a few sounds he wasn’t yet making, and in general I probably only understood about 70% of what he said. Speech therapist didn’t seem concerned. She said it is normal for some sounds to emerge properly later on (preschool or later).

This was nearly a year ago and he has got significantly clearer but I still don’t understand absolutely everything he says. He is still less clear than some of his peers who seem to enunciate very well, but I guess he is in the normal range.

Thanks for replying. I can understand most of what she says tbh unless she's a bit tired or upset and goes into babble mode. I'd say she can make most of the key sounds including fairly complex ones like sh and ch but it's a bit sporadic eg and she might use it for one word but not another as above. Also she mixes sounds up eg she will say mouse and mummy etc using the mmmm sound but when she says 'my' it comes out 'dy'. She also rambles sounds together eg 'i want to' comes out 'iato' if that makes sense. It's perhaps a bit early to say but do you think with your son it's having an impact on his ability to learn reading etc? Or to socialise with peers? Like I say every time my gut tells me something is a bit off she has another explosion and I wonder why I ever worried. They like to keep us on their toes lol

In addition, one or 2 words come out completely and utterly different to how they're meant to be said eg milk comes out 'qualtz' and many words she misses some of the sylables eg dinosaur is disaur. I will add as well that whereas I understand mostly what she says I am frequently having to translate even for her daddy

He’s got lots of friends at his preschool and confidently chats with people. He holds his own fine with his older brother. He was a bit later to pick up letter sounds compared to his older brother but he is getting the hang of it now.

His older brother was observed in reception because teacher was a little concerned about his speech and I had speech therapy as a child so there’s a bit of family history but I’m not worried about him.

Tbh she seems so far to be doing ok with reading basics to say she's not even 3 yet. Eg she's just reading one of the 'oi' series books and is going through and pointing at all the times she can find oi and saying 'oi' and she's just perfectly sounded out the word puppies. I will add that this is because daddy asked her to. If I did she'd refuse or answer completely wrong.... kids are such fun

Sounds totally normal to me. :)

My niece is nearly 3 and she sounds similar to yours. She says "disaur" too. Most words are a little wrong but I understand her nearly all the time with context. I got confused the other day when she spilt something on her sleeve and was saying "sees"! She was showing me her arm but she had her fingers curled like the letter C so I thought she was saying "C"! It must be so frustrating to be a young kid and have people misunderstand you lol. Ice cream is "i-seem", Chelsea and Jessie are both "sessie", grandpa is "gampa", Erin is "Ewin", and she uses "me" in contexts where it should be "I" eg "me open it", "me do it". All her classmates at nursery are similar from the little conversation I've had with them.

I don't think they're expected to be speaking correctly yet, just that they can make themselves understood