toddler not speaking clearly

"Irrational Number" wrote and I snipped:
PattyMomVA wrote:

What I would do is to begin to work with him on enunciation. You don't
have to go all out and insist that he pronounce every word clearly, but I
think you can encourage good pronunciation, one word or two at a time.

Be very gentle when you do this, if at all...

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/0601/11.php

My BIL stuttered because MIL thought she was
doing the right thing by constantly correcting
his speech...

Anita, I think it's ridiculous to make such a leap from my suggestion. If
your toddler was hitting his friend, you'd help him learn to use gentle
hands. If he's mispronouncing words, you help him pronounce them correctly.
Of course I don't advocate belittling anyone. I was very careful to suggest
the OP work on one or two words at a time. That has nothing to do with
constantly correcting speech or making the child self-conscious. It's about
working with your child first rather than assuming he'll need specialists.

-Patty, mom of 1+2

Chookie wrote:
[snip]
Researcher: What's this?
Child: Fiss!
R: Oh, a fiss!
C: No! Fiss!
R: Is it a fish?
C: Yes, fiss!

Unless their hearing is impaired, the child knows what the correct sounds are
-- they just have trouble making some of them. Unless *everyone* around the
child says 'fiss' all the time, they will eventually make the right sounds.
It's interesting to hear them at it -- the pronunciation is approximate and is
gradually refined.

I don't think this is true. Some children do still have pronouciation
problems when they reach school age, and need speech therapy.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

bizby40 wrote:
[snip]
I'm sure you can go too far in both directions. I suppose that if all
the kid hears is baby-talk, he would have no reason to understand that
wasn't normal speech. But you can go too far the other way too. I
remember being in the library one day. A small boy was reading a book
about caterpillars, and he tried to excitedly tell his mom something,
and she stopped him and made him say the word caterpillar 5 or 6 times
until she thought he'd gotten close enough. I remember being
impressed that a child that young was reading that way, so I suppose
her methods had benefited him. I still felt just a little sad for
him.

My reaction is that perhaps the boy was reading the word incorrectly,
rather then pronouncing "caterpillar" wrong. The mum may have been
making him re-read it until he got it close enough to recognise
the word for himself.

For a while in our household, the Egyptian queen known by Julius Ceasar
was called Cletrapedia, because that was how they pronounced it when
they read the book "Asterix and Cleopatra".

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

"Penny Gaines" wrote in message
...
Chookie wrote:
[snip]
Researcher: What's this?
Child: Fiss!
R: Oh, a fiss!
C: No! Fiss!
R: Is it a fish?
C: Yes, fiss!

Unless their hearing is impaired, the child knows what the correct sounds
are -- they just have trouble making some of them. Unless *everyone*
around the child says 'fiss' all the time, they will eventually make the
right sounds. It's interesting to hear them at it -- the pronunciation
is approximate and is gradually refined.

I don't think this is true. Some children do still have pronouciation
problems when they reach school age, and need speech therapy.

But I think I think it is true for many children who have no speech delay or
problem. DS would say "son" when he meant "thumb." We couldn't figure it
out and kept asking him if he was talking about a "son." He said "NO! SON!"
and pointed stuck out his thumb. So, he definitely heard it right, he just
says it wrong, and it was the same with lots of other words. If we mimic
him, he'd laugh, because we were saying it wrong. Now, he speaks quite
clearly.

Penny Gaines wrote:
For a while in our household, the Egyptian queen known by Julius Ceasar
was called Cletrapedia, because that was how they pronounced it when
they read the book "Asterix and Cleopatra".

LOL Isn't it funny how childish mis-pronunciations get integrated
into families. My baby phrase was "I lub boo" (I love you). My whole
family said that, including my parents, and many years later, my
brothers, too. It's as if we all knew two phrases "I love you" and "I
lub boo" and the latter was just a family endearment or something.
What's funny, is that my *husband* picked it up from me, because he
thought it was really cute, and now *he* says it, and so does my
daughter. We all know the right phrase, including my little one, but
it's just something we say among the family.

Another similar one, is a mispronunciation by my stepson - he called
mushrooms "muppers" when we was little, and one time when my husband
was ordering pizza, he ordered it with muppers - and then had to deal
with the embarrassment of having said the baby word instead of the real
thing, to the guy on the phone, who of course, didn't understand him!
:-)

One of my favorites - though this didn't get propogated - was my
brother's: Wind-Wheel-Shipers (Windshield wipers) and Mazagine
(magazine).

Cathy Weeks

"Penny Gaines" wrote in message
news
bizby40 wrote:
A small boy was reading a book about caterpillars, and he tried to
excitedly tell his mom something, and she stopped him and made him
say the word caterpillar 5 or 6 times until she thought he'd gotten
close enough. I remember being impressed that a child that young
was reading that way, so I suppose her methods had benefited him.
I still felt just a little sad for him.

My reaction is that perhaps the boy was reading the word
incorrectly,
rather then pronouncing "caterpillar" wrong. The mum may have been
making him re-read it until he got it close enough to recognise
the word for himself.

I don't think so. IIRC, she enunciated it for him and had him repeat
it after her. It was many years ago, so I can't remember exactly how
he pronounced it, but I know I could understand what he meant
perfectly well. Oh, well, there are worse things you can do to a kid.

Bizby

"Cathy Weeks" writes:

Penny Gaines wrote:
One of my favorites - though this didn't get propogated - was my
brother's: Wind-Wheel-Shipers (Windshield wipers) and Mazagine
(magazine).

Our oldest daughter had a strange way of saying words that being with
"s" when she was learning to talk. She would take the "s" from the
front of the word and stick it on the back. So "spoon" became
"poons", snowman became "nose-man" (with hard "s", not soft), etc.
Every once in a while I'll say "poons" just to remind her of stories
of what she was like when she was little (she's 14 now!).

--
Darius S. Naqvi email: dsn at dsn dot incentre dot net
("From:" line email address with "nospam" removed)

Darius S. Naqvi wrote:
Our oldest daughter had a strange way of saying words that being with
"s" when she was learning to talk. She would take the "s" from the
front of the word and stick it on the back. So "spoon" became
"poons", snowman became "nose-man" (with hard "s", not soft), etc.
Every once in a while I'll say "poons" just to remind her of stories
of what she was like when she was little (she's 14 now!).

My son does this too. I have to emphasize the "s" for him to say
*Sp*oon. Actually he almost always asks for "poon and fork". I think
it's pretty common.

-L.

"lacey" wrote in message
ups.com...
hello - my son is a month over two yrs. and has a great vocabulary. He
comes up with new words all the time and I can even get him to repeat
words back to me. He follows simple commands but sometimes "ignores"
me (but don't we all ignore someone at some point during the day?).
His vocabulary isn't my issue, it's his speaking - it's just not clear.
Daddy is still dada and i'm mama, and certain words like quack, woof,
and a few others are identifiable but the majority of his words are
blurred. He'll go on a tirade in his elfish language and along the way
i can pick out only a handful of words. All the other kids in his
class are around his age or younger - he's the second to oldest, and
everyone speaks more clearly. His vocabulary beats out some of the
other kids' but even the kid who can only say two words is clearer.
His hearing hasn't been checked since he was a newborn, and we read at
least two books before nap AND before bedtime and we talk all the time
(even though i can't understand a word of it most of the time - any
thoughts?


I used to have a chart, that I got from college when training to be a
childcare worker. It showed the common mistakes in pronunciation, and the
age they usually got it right. I can't remember exactly now, but it was
common for kids to struggle with a couple of sounds all the way up to around
7 yo. There were a lot of difficulties in the younger age group. This
chart was used to measure the milestones in development and help to judge if
there was a problem.

I personally wouldn't worry *too much* - within reason, until they're in
kinder. There's always speech therapy available then.

My daughter used to substitute most words with a *y* at the start. Most of
the time we'd understand it, but the teacher had trouble. Speech therapy
worked very quickly. She now talks pretty much perfectly. She's 11 next
week. She also does really well in her studies, she hasn't gotten behind
because of it.

Jen

What concerns me, though, and the OPs child sounds like my daughter (22
months), is a child for which almost any single word is understandable,
within the bounds of toddler substitutions, but when the child tries to put
words together, it turns into almost incomprehensible babble. I've taped my
daughter a few times, and after listening over time, I can tell what she's
trying to say. She's definitely making sentences, but in normal conversation
is next to impossible to understand. I might get the first or last word, but
not much beyond that, and I'm with her daily, far more than anyone else is,
and have a lot of experience with toddlers and preschoolers so am used to
young child speak. She is VERY frustrated when she's not understood, and you
can watch her simplify her sentences until she's understood-if she doesn't
get to the tantrum stage first. What I've been told so far is that as long
as there are a few understandable words that's considered normal, but she's
had a few understandable words since she was 9 months, and two word
sentences since she was 11 months. However, I've seen NO improvement in the
comprehensibility of longer sentences as they've developed. She's still
understandable on single words and 2 word telegraphic speech, but nothing
more.

I was in speech therapy from age 5 until aging out of the program at age
21-and I still have some speech sounds which never developed and have to
work hard to keep my speech understandable. If my daughter is having
difficulty, I want to know it early so I can get her help, not just be
pushed off with "wait and see" comments.

So, my question is-is it normal for an early talker to be difficult to
understand beyond the single word stage, and is this something which will
improve over time on it's own, or do I need to push harder for a speech
eval?