When should my child be able to say r words?
Has your toddler ever said “I wuv you” or “Mommy, it’s waining outside”?
It’s not uncommon for a small child to substitute one speech sound that she can say for another that she can’t yet say, like substituting a w sound for either an r or l sound. Sometimes children will even leave out certain sounds or distort sounds that are hard to pronounce. For example, the letter s is tricky – even Sid the Sloth from the movie Ice Age found it a challenge! Sid demonstrated what speech-language pathologists call a lateral lisp. When a lateral lisp occurs breath escapes over the sides of the tongue rather than traveling straight forward, creating a slushy sound.
Later developing speech sounds are highly variable in terms of age of acquisition. That means that being able to produce sounds like r as in the word rain, zh as in garage, and th as in in this or thing take more time to achieve, let alone master consistently.
In 2020 researchers McLeod & Crowe studied how and when kids acquire the ability to pronounce different consonant sounds and devised norms for typically developing children. The list below shows the different consonant sounds and the age that 90% of children develop the ability to pronounce these speech sounds:
3 YEARS - p, b, m, n, h, w, d
4 YEARS - t, k, g, f, ng, y (as in yoyo)
5 YEARS - l, j, s, sh, ch, z, v
6 YEARS - r, voiced th (as in the), zh (as in garage)
7 YEARS - unvoiced th (as in think)
If you’ve noticed that your school-aged child is having a difficult time correctly producing one or two of these speech sounds by the ages listed above, a licensed speech-language pathologist (a.k.a. SLP) can be an excellent resource for you. In the case that your child is diagnosed with a speech sound disorder, an SLP can incorporate articulation therapy into entertaining and engaging games and activities that will help your child learn how to confidently pronounced sounds that are misarticulated. With skilled speech therapy and practice she’ll soon be up and running!