A tip for supporting a child to say a word with a tricky speech sound.
Sometimes in attempt to teach a speech sound in a word, children have sounds repeated to them e.g. ‘k-k-k-kat’ and invariably they will say ‘k-k-k-tat’ which when you think about it, actually that doesn’t sound anything like ‘cat’. This will usually be frustrating for them and put them off trying to copy again.
A child may be able to say a speech sound all by itself, or in a short word e.g. with just a vowel, but it can be hard to get that same speech sound in a word or phrase! I have found that going very slowly on a full breath out can help a child achieve that tricky speech sound! It may sound a bit breathy or ghostly to start out with, but when the word is eventually sped up, it sounds just right.
I love the sloth in Zootopia who takes everything slowly. He could go even slower with his words to run them together more, but it gives a child a point of reference for going realllly slowly:
The word ‘cat’ can be modelled very sssslllloowwwlllly like a sloth: breathe out as you say ‘cat’, taking about 3 seconds to get through the whole word. It almost sounds like you are saying khhhaaaat, but all of the sounds are there. Speed up to 2 ½ seconds, then 2 seconds…little by little the sounds are in the word to a more typical speed, but they are joined together (vs ‘k-at’ or ‘k-tat’).
The word ‘sun’ can be modelled very sssslllloowwwlllly like a sloth: breathe out as you say ‘sun’, taking about 3 seconds to get through the whole word. It almost sounds like you are saying sssshhhhhuuun, but all of the sounds are there. Speed up to 2 ½ seconds, then 2 seconds and so on.
Just a side note about speech sounds… When talking to your child about speech, talk about the sounds rather than naming the ‘letters’ associated with them. For example, if you are talking about the word “fall” and want to teach the ‘f’ sound, say: “’fall’ starts with the ffff sound” rather than “fall starts with the “eff” sound”. It can be a bit confusing for children with so many variations between speech sounds and letter names. For example, the letter ‘G’, if said like “gee”, doesn’t actually contain the ‘g’ sound made at the back of the tongue. So, when thinking and talking about speech, stick to highlighting the speech sounds rather than the letter names.