Speech Sound Disorders

All children make sound mistakes when speaking as their language develops. However, once the error continues past the ‘norm’ age there may be a need for a speech and language evaluation.

Common signs of a speech sound disorder.

  • The child substitutes incorrect sounds for targeted sounds

    • instead of saying the /f/ sound they may produce a /p/ sound

    • i.e. ‘fast’ sounds like ‘past’

  • The child omits or ‘deletes’ sounds

    • leaving out the ending or beginning sound in a word

    • i.e. ‘dad’ sounds like ‘da’ or ‘ad’

  • The child distorts sounds

    • the /s/ sounds slushy (lisp) or the /j/ sounds like /sh/

  • The child produces whole words inconsistently

    • i.e. ‘elephant’ is sometimes ‘ehfan’, sometimes' ‘lufuh’ and sometimes ‘ehfund’

  • The child adds in additional sounds to a word

    • i.e. plane sounds like ‘puhlane’

Speech sound disorders can be separated into 2 groups:

Articulation Disorders and Phonological Disorders.

It is more likely to be considered a phonological disorder when the errors are consistent and follow a phonological pattern. When the errors appear to be independent of each other and do not seem to follow a particular rule of error then it is considered an articulation disorder.