Speech therapy: at what age do you seriously consider it?

Hi there

DS1 is 5, starting school in January. He is so very very ready, and while the whole "sitting down" thing is going to be an adjustment process, we have no real concerns.

One thing however (which shouldn't impact his schooling) is that he still has trouble with his Ss and Rs.

Hearing, understanding, health etc is all a-ok, it's just the pronunciation.

We obviously help him out at home, but it doesn't stick.

At what age should this correct itself? At what age do you consult a speech therapist?

I think he's still within the 'normal' range for developing those sounds. This offers fairly clear guidelines : http://m.raisingchildren.net.au/arti...disorders.html

Miss 6 still has some issues with 'r' but is getting clearer and clearer in her speech overall so I'm assuming that it too will iron out eventually!

Fabulous. Thanks!

If it's just those two sounds and nothing else is going on, I really wouldn't worry too much about it. Do you know if they do Jolly Phonics at the school he's going to? That program does a lot of work with sounds and helping the kids learn how to say each sound and to hear it in words etc.

I don't think so - they do THRASS.

Is that the same?

THRASS is a still a phonetic approach to learning, it just incorporates all of the possible sound/letter combinations and has a stronger focus on spelling than just learning sounds like Jolly Phonics does. A bit hard for prep though IMO, especially considering that you can have up to 5 different letter combinations to get a particular sound in some instances. The problem with THRASS - and why we do THRASS at my school with year 1-6, not kinder - is that there's not a lot of focus on single sounds as a separate thing. Jolly Phonics explicitly teaches each sound, which then progresses to diagraphs and blends etc. He should be fine with it, because I imagine that if they are using THRASS at a prep level then they are going to know that some students will still have age-appropriate issues with sounds and will be able to help those kids master it. I think that if he's OK with understanding it and it's just how he says it, then there shouldn't really be a problem.

S especially is a sound that should be developed in the preschool/kindergarten years. So age 4/5ish. I do speech therapy with children at my work and a lot of them need S or S blend (sl, sm, sn etc words) focus.
All 3 of my own children had speech disorders with my first born being severe, so I had Ashton on a waiting list from 18mths old. R is a definite later sound. No one I work with has R specific targets even though some noticeably can't say it (yet).