Speech Buddies Speech Therapy System

When is a Speech Sound Error Considered a Disorder?

Learning to Talk – the Basics of Speech Sound Errors:

Nothing warms a parent’s heart like a child learning to talk.  The cute speech sound errors that go along with the learning process make us chuckle.  My friend’s son always wanted to listen to “mucus” instead of “music” and for months, our cat Zoey was “Zeeeee!” by my enthusiastic toddler.  While the adults exchanged smiles and laughs when our kids were young, if their ability to form words correctly persisted beyond the age of three or four, the laughter would be replaced with valid concern that they may have a speech problem.

As children are learning to speak, they make a lot of mistakes.  Substituting sounds for each other (“mucus”), eliminating sounds (“Zeeee!”), changing a sound (“wabbit” instead of “rabbit”), or adding a sound when it doesn’t belong (“Jonanna” for “Joanna”) are all forms of a type of speech sound error called articulation errors.  The other type of speech sound errors are called phonological errors, which is a little harder to identify as it is a problem within the speech  development process.  If a word starts with two consonants (“spoon”) and a child only says one of those sounds (“poon”), for example, and also “touble” for “trouble” and “bade” for “blade,” and assuming the child can say the omitted sound on its own ( “soon” or “rubble” in the above examples), this is a type of phonological process error. 

When is a speech sound error considered a disorder?

The important thing for parents to understand is that all children make these errors when they are learning to speak.  It’s a normal part of the learning process.  In the early years, we should do our best to encourage them to keep talking, mistakes and all.  Most of these errors will correct themselves over time and we should provide a positive environment for our children to learn.  These errors become speech disorders when they persist past what is considered the developmentally normal for the age of the child and the sound he is trying to produce.  This is different for each sound.  The B-sound is one of the sounds that children master first, usually by two or three years of age.  By contrast, the R-sound is one of the most difficult and not usually mastered until a child is five or six years old.  A helpful guide for understanding when sounds are mastered is the Talking Child speech development chart.

Speech Buddies help correct the five most common articulation disorders – difficulty producing the R, S, L, CH & SH sounds.  By providing a target inside the mouth for a child to feel, Speech Buddies teach correct tongue placement for each of these sounds.  Speech Buddies may not directly address phonological process disorders as these depend on the speech context in which the sounds appear, but they are applicable on a case-by-case basis depending on the type of error.

By: A. Penake, CFO, Articulate Technologies