What is it?
Speech sounds are the sounds we make, using our mouth, to form words. To make sounds the brain needs an idea to communicate, then it send the idea to the mouth telling it which words to say and the sounds to make. This includes signals to the muscles that control the tongue, lips and jaw.
What to expect?
By three years old children will usually:
- Be interested in playing with sounds, song and rhymes.
- Have other sounds like c/k,g,f,s,y,h,l,y ,emerging.
- Likely to alter words to simplify them, e.g. “nana” for banana.
Information & advice
You can help by:
- Let your child have the opportunity to mix and play with children of their own age. This way they will get to hear the speech of other children and will gain confidence.
- Listening to what your child is saying rather than how he is saying it.
- Share books together – Talk about the different sounds they hear such as a train’s ‘choo choo’ while looking at the pictures
- Modelling back the correct word if a child uses the wrong sounds. Do not ask your child to repeat the word over and over; he is unlikely to be able to correct it. Even if they can, it is unlikely that he will be able to carry this across to the next time they use the word.
Watch our speech sounds videos here