How do children with speech delay usually manage in reception?

[ThisRareOtter]

My son is 4 next month, and will start reception in September. He's still struggling with pronouncing some sounds, such as "ck" and "g", which I think is called "fronting" from my extensive googling!
I'm really worried about how he will fair in reception. Surely his progress with reading is going to be hampered if he can't make the sounds he need to do in phonics. He's on the waitlist for speech therapy but nobody can tell me how long we might be waiting. I wish we could afford to go privately but it's so out of reach for us at £100 ish per session.

Does anyone have any experience of how their child got along in reception if they've had speech delay? Any teachers with any experience? I feel dreadfully guilty that we can't afford to get him help before he starts.

I worked with children with a speech delay for a couple of years ( not a therapist though) I wouldn’t worry .Model clear speech,don’t correct just repeat the words used clearly and give it time.Speech delay is common and once he is in school you will be advised by them.Keep reading to him too.

Thank you, that is reassuring. It's so hard not to worry isn't it!!

I have a child with a speech delay (just one word sentences at three) but it didn’t actually delay progress in reading at all, if they can approximate the sound and knows what it should be.

I worked with them 10-15 minutes a day with this specific book: amzn.eu/d/0dbDmOCx

Happy to report that they are reading at above grade level at 5 years old.

(American English and pronunciation so may not suit you, but there’s plenty similar)

It's very common, especially nowadays with so many screens around (not saying this is the case for yours, mine had a small speech delay and had never had any screen other than a tiny bit of tv.) He will be absolutely fine though and the school will support him further.

Make sure you narrate things that you are doing and do as much talking together as possible, .g. take him to the supermarket and talk through what you're going to buy, do baking and chat through the recipe and method together, games in the car can also be really good like My granny went to market and she brought...etc.

speech therapsist here. Fronting should be gone by 4 but is still pretty common at this age, is he doing anything else? I expect if he’s just fronting you may end up with advice rather than actual input from nhs services at this at point.

Lots of children with speech sound delays also have have phologocial awareness needs. These are the skills that underpin with speech and phonics. For lots of preschoolers targeting phonological awareness will be enough to improve their speech . I would start giving him a boost by working on this at home and asking nursery to do the same in a small group (hopefully they already are). This should include skills like rhyme awareness and early rhyme generation, syllable clapping and sorting words by their initial sound. You’ll be able to find lots of information online.

He will also benefit from lots of modelling through the day. If he says ‘tat’, you say ‘yes, a Car’. Put slight emphasis on the target sound. It’s important that he hears lots of good examples throughout the day.

You can change this for him before he starts school.

My 5 year old has a speech delay because of long-term glue ear.

He is doing really well with reading but behind in most other areas including making friends, because he can’t articulte himself fully.

He is happy at school and they are supportive, but don’t have resource for proper speech therapy. We are having to go private to arrange grommets and a speech therapist.

I work as an early years TA and do speech and language work daily with a group of children - some following a plan given by speech therapists some we are doing what we can while waiting for further assistance.

I do lots of speech sounds work and games which encourage the mouth movements for the sounds with the children. This helps most a lot, with some we have also found that the way phonics focuses in on individual sounds helps with the pronunciation overall.

Just out of interest, don’t nurseries teach any phonics? My DDs did sounds and phonics from age 3. Ok some dc weren’t ready, but mine lived their sounds! It wasn’t a scheme as such but any child with a delay was obviously picked up and info went to the YR teachers.

When one of mine started reception, no one but me could understand what he was saying. We did ten minutes a day on a sound. By the end of year 2, he was the narrator in the school nativity.

It’s easy for me to say don’t worry, but working in a school now, I see how much progress children make. He will likely receive a small group intervention.

I’m a Reception teacher. He won’t be the only child who isn’t pronouncing all his sounds correctly. If he can hear the sounds it won’t necessarily impact on his reading. He will still be recognising a sound and saying it and reading the word correctly. It just won’t sound correct due to his pronunciation. As a teacher we will learn which sounds he can’t pronounce and know what he is actually trying to say. I hope that makes sense?
Also a lot can change in the 6 months before he starts Reception.

My ds had a bad speech delay, still missing the initial sounds of words age 5 - and still struggles with articulating himself especially using irregular past tense in speech (“runned” and “singed” etc).

At reception age he struggled enormously with rhyming - he simply couldn’t understand me that cat rhymes with sat.

I did find it very worrying but I knew we simply had to keep trying - and it has paid off. He has caught up to his peer group academically and now has beautiful handwriting (better than his big sister aged 11!). He’s definitely not ahead - but the fact he’s able to keep up is really important I think.

He is not stupid, and he has strangely got a good ear for language now he’s a bit older - he can count to twenty in French with a near-perfect accent, and is now learning basic French with me. You might think that’s mad - but it gives him a lot of confidence and it’s part of practising making different shapes with your mouth and really listening to HOW a sound is made. For some reason French just seems to come naturally to him! It took me ages to understand how to make nasal sounds but I explained it once and he got it right away.

He has slow processing but no other SEN and teachers aren’t interested in exploring his slow processing (state school).

We support heavily at home with maths and reading and writing practice.

Actually I think phonics helped him as you are forced to articulate the sounds and we then had a reason to practise. Our school used Read Write Inc and I found the scheme excellent.

We did ten minutes every morning in reception .

I scrupulously followed the approach dictated by school - bought similar resources on Vinted so we didn’t deviate at all from what he learned in class.

Now, age7, he is bang on target for reading and spelling.

Socially - his speech is still behind so he can get in trouble at school (friends wind him up, he gets frustrated and can’t easily find the words to explain to teachers his side of the story.)

It was sometimes hard to get him to participate in “home learning” without him being upset and he still thinks he is “stupid” despite my efforts. But he persevered because we made a routine and didn’t let him off and I explained that learning is supposed to be hard as we are making the brain stronger just like when we practice cycling or swimming sometimes our muscles hurt and we get out of breath, when we are exercising our minds sometimes that makes us feel like we can’t do it. So then we pause and catch our breath or take a longer break, step back a few steps and try again.

It is not easy but your dc will catch up! Sometimes it will hopeless but then you look back at how far they have come and you will be really amazed.

Oh and LOTS of games and praise op! Junior scrabble is good when he’s a bit older, but you can make your own games .

Once we got to basic words, id get a cloth bag and put all sorts of things in it - a photo of our cat, a cow from the toy farm, a Lego brick, a spoon, an egg from the play kitchen, a ring, a ball etc. Then id have loads of words written on little snips of card, he would fish something out of the bag then he’d have to find the word. To make it harder I’d then spell the word wrong on some cards so he’d have to find the right one. Interestingly he could always do this right away - he would never pick “borl” instead of “ball” which shows you how quickly we internalise spelling!

Ps don’t panic - that word game was a y1 not a reception game! But he did enjoy it

My DD has different issues but I'd second supporting from home.

I bought books that were more engaging for her than the school ones (library also good for this) and got a research-backed app called Teach Your Monster To Read. We used to do it whenever we were waiting: for the bus, for the doctor etc.

I also used Reading Eggs as it's fun and includes some standardised tests.

But most of all: talk to him lots and lots. There are speech therapy resources you can use at home, like this one:

Speech and Language Therapy Toolkit | CPFT NHS Trust https://share.google/wTAyp0QUJWhG9ahLO

Thank you for this, that's really helpful. The teachers at his nursery said they'd have expected it to have improved by 3.5 and are trying to do smaller input groups with him but I know resources are tight. He's starting to get so frustrated when we don't understand him. He is recently loving rhyming and just started saying the first sounds of words, so hopefully these are good signs.
He also has dysphagia and is on thickened fluids, so I've wondered if there is a connection with the fronting as all using the back of the mouth.
We shall keep going with modelling and hope for improvement before September 🙏🏻

He has started doing phonics at the school nursery and he's keen to do the sounds he can say, but gets frustrated with the ones he can't when we don't understand him. Hopefully they will flag him to the Reception team so he gets further support when he starts, assuming he still needs it 🤞🏻

This looks fab, thank you so much. It will be my bedtime reading tonight!!

Thank you so much for everyone who has commented, I really appreciate it. It's so reassuring to hear stories where children have been in similar situations and still managed ok with their reading etc, and for extra ideas to support him. Thank you!

@ThisRareOtter Hopefully he will start forming the sounds with a little more maturity. Good luck.

My son has really improved since starting school. I was a bit worried and also worried other kids would make fun of him, but he’s improved so quickly. His teacher is really good which helps.

I'm a SALT (although I work with adults) and ex-primary teacher. DD2 had about 25% intelligible speech to me (as her mum) when she started primary - she has verbal dyspraxia (we now know) but we did lots and lots of phonological awareness and she actually picked up phonics fine, and is a greater depth reader, top set of English in secondary, got exceeding in SATs etc etc.

Depends if they can "hear" the right sound even if they can't say it. I'd do lots of focusing on the difference between minimal pairs that have the "confused" sounds - like key/tea (I know they're spelt differently and I'm also shit at making up minimal pairs which is one reason I work with adults).

I know it's hard not to worry, but so many children enter Reception now with a speech and language difficulty of some sort. He won't necessarily be as behind his peers as you are fearing. Children with speech sound production issues can still have good vocabulary and comprehension skills. Production of language is generally an easier fix than difficulties processing language.

I know it's a frustratingly long wait but starting school usually pushes them through the system quicker, as school will be able to carry out their own assessments and make their own referral if they need to hurry it through as they'll have links to their own assigned speech therapist. This professional will be able to give advice to the TA's running interventions with him before he even makes it to the top of the list to receive 'proper' speech therapy.

When it comes to reading, speech sound production won't necessarily hold him back from achieving the Early Learning Goal. As long as a child is consistent in what they say for each letter sound (to show understanding), they won't be penalised for not being able to pronounce it. For example, a child can still be expected if they consistently say 'dot' when blending 'got', if it's clearly a speech production issue rather than a phonics one.

The area it can cause more difficulty in is independent writing, if a child is struggling to hear the individual sounds in a word. I often find that when I dictate a sentence, children with speech production issues are able to spell it correctly as they can hear the sounds I'm saying in each word. However, if left to write independently they may substitute some of the sounds as they can't hear the correct individual sounds when they sound out themselves. So 'dog' may be written as 'dod', or even something like 'dob', 'bod' or 'bob' if they are prone to letter reversals too.

School will give him a lot of support with this though. A year is such a long time in terms of speech development. He could have made great strides by June next year, when assessments are being made against the Early Learning Goals.

I have experience of both working with reception aged children, and my now teen dd had the same issues with the same speech sounds.
DS also had issues with speech and language, but his was more of a speech delay.

This was during peak Frozen (the movie) so dd used to sing “Let it DO” (go) at the top of her voice, At age 4 or so. She would pronounce C as T, so a cat was a tat, etc.

We did speech therapy, and worked on one sound at a time. I can’t remember the order, but it was very quick to correct. You model the correct sound, and we would practice saying “guh”. Guh.. guh…
Lots of G pictures and stories.

As for reception, it’s so common, and you’d be surprised how easily teachers and TAs can understand each child. Even if they don’t, there’s no need to worry. And again, in my experience, it doesn’t really have much of an impact on their phonics.

September is a long time away anyway. A lot can change in as little as 6 weeks.

My son has just turned 4 and I had similar concerns.
I don’t know what area you are in but I recently attended a ‘talking walk in’ session which is run by the nhs in Kent in different family hub locations.
There were 2 speech and language therapists there and and he had a quick assessment and they were happy with his language for his age which in turn relaxed me a bit! So maybe have a look and see if your area has something similar.
if it’s any consolation also my now 7 year old was similar but has perfect speech now it just came all of a sudden! Good luck the worry never ends! X

My son had far worse speech delays starting reception. He's year 5 now, smartest kid in his class. He still has a lisp, but its fine.

Even though he couldn't make the sounds properly in phonics, he knew what they were and did his best to say them as well as he could. His speech delay didnt hold him back, actually not being able to be understood for so long, made him very driven and determined. I think part of his intelligence is down to those qualities.

Staff who work with young children are expert translators of common speech impediment and delays. He'll be understood and won't be made to feel bad about it when learning to read. I know the anxiety of a child that struggles to communicate going off to school all too well.