new development in 4 yo speech driving me nuts ...

[ejt1764]

I've never posted on mumsnet before - although I've lurked for a loooong time!

My ds (4 last week) has started dropping the t in the middle of all of his words and it's driving me nuts! (So we get nau-y for naughty, and li-le for little , par-y for party etc)

I'm ok with the 'dealing with it' approach having done that for sleep problems, hitting, biting etc., or even the'ignoring it' approach - having done that for fussy eating, tantrums, etc., but I keep finding myself repeating the word back to him properly - and it's making not the blindest bit of difference!

It's not even as though he's hearing it anywhere - the bit of South Wales where we live has the opposite thing if you know what I mean (people adding extra syllables to words!), and as a bilingual English - Welsh family, he doesn't hear it at all in Welsh - and it wouldn't happen at school either, as that's Welsh-medium too...

Any suggestions? - this is driving me loopy!

ta,
Eirian

[kittythescarygoblin]

ejt, I're got that with my 6 year old . It drives his father mad. I've said just to leave it and it will pass. If you make anything if it it will get worse. You could just keep repeating the words back to him very casually in the way you want them to be pronounced. he also does that rising accent at the end of a sentence thing, that drives ne really mad and I take the p*ss when he does that.
My 5 year old dd goes round speakng in a vile barbie American accent all the time and that
drives me nuts too!! I keep saying to myself
" It will pass, breathe deeply and count to 10 " :0

[tassis]

funny you should say this as ds (3.5) has just started doing exactly the same an it's doing my head in!!

he's just started nursery so I can only assume he's heard it there...

(sorry that doesn't help you!)

[hulababy]

DD does this on occasion - I blame too much American TV via Nick Jr!

We don't mention it to her, but we do tend to repeat the word in a phrase back to her straight away, but with the correct pronunciation.

"Mummy, please can I have some wa-er?"
"Yes, of course, I will just go and get a glass of waTer for you"

[wakeupandsmellthecoffee]

I looked after a child once and her teacher asked me if her father was american due to her accent . I replied not unless her mother married a disney character . Dont worry it does pass .

[PrettyCandles]

Dd picked up this irritating habit somewhere too. At first I tried ignoring it (albeit with gritted teeth), but, it hasn't improved over the months - if anything it's worse. So I started repeating her words back to her correctly. And often I will ask her to say at least one of the words correctly - usually the noun of the sentence.

Eg "May I have a drink of wa'er, please?"
"A drink of what?"
"Wa'er"
"Sorry, I don't understand - what do you want to drink?"
"Wa-ter" (usually pronounced very slowly and pedantically, as if she's trying to teach me!)

She's gradually getting the idea, but it's taken months.

I don't expect to completely 'cure' her for a long time, and won't make more of a fuss of it yet. Ds refused to try to correct any of his speech errors (typically f/v for th - birds have feavers etc) until he started getting the hang of spelling. Now he can see a reason to change his speech, and is co-operating.

[Tommy]

I do like Pretty candles - pretend not to understand until he says it properly.

Mine picked it up at nursery - he told me that "wa'er" was another way of saying water - I told him it was most definitly not

[sorrell]

Chill - it's a phase.

[hannahsaunt]

I always told ds that the t's were put in words to be said and did this every time he dropped one. Worked a treat up until he started telling off his nursery teacher, his grandmother... (His papa thought it was v funny though!)

[ejt1764]

Thank you all - I now know that I'm not alone for a start, and that in itself is great.

I love the idea of pretending I can't understand him - I already do that when he uses the 'whiney' voice - either that or I answer him in exactly the same way as he's just spoken to me - you know - he says: 'maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam?' (rising inflection ending up so that only dogs can hear him), so I say: 'yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees' (same inflection) - he finds it really funny, but then realises why I've done it, and then repeats what he said properly.

We are waiting for a speech therapy referral to come through (12 months waiting list!!), as he does have a problem with some consonants (r, v, s, to name a few - bit of a problem when he's speaking Welsh, as there's a lot of consonants in the languages as a whole )- but as he was able to say the letter t until a couple of weeks ago, I feel that I need to tackle this one myself.

Thanks all,
Eirian

[moondog]

Hello Ejt.
Am a salt and fellow Cymraes.
It should pass-don't overdo the criticism,just keep modelling positively back what you want him to say.
eg 'I want some bu'er'
You 'Oh,it's the butter you want is it?' and so on.

[ejt1764]

Hi Moondog,
Thanks for your encouragement - now going to try to be a bit cheeky and pick your brains ...

Any ideas on how to tackle the problems with the other consonants as well? When he speaks Welsh, he is very difficult to understand. It's the same consonant sounds that give him problems in English, but in English it's not so much of a problem. I tried to explain this to the HV when she came to talk to me prior to making the referral, but she couldn't understand what I was talking about ...

Do you know of any Welsh-speaking SALTs that are in private practice?

Thanks, Moondog - sorry to be so cheeky!

Eirian

[moondog]

No problems Eirian.
Try this link which lists all properly registered slts.

Here

I know loads of Welsh speaking slts but none in private practice (am in North,are you in South?)

HV presumably wasn't a Welsh speaker?

You must have a bilingual person to do a proper assessment.Ignore anyone who doesn't speak Welsh who says they can do it.

HTH

[Goldie]

When my daughter drops the 't' in words, I say in a light-hearted fashion, "Oh, you've lost your 'T'. Where's it gone? Can we find it anywhere?", jokingly looking round to see if I can find the lost 'T'!

[ejt1764]

Thanks Moondog for the link - I have looked on there, and none of them in our area, we are in the South, just south of Cardiff to be precise, and none of the SALTs listed for our area specify that they are Welsh speaking.

I think I'll just email those who are in our area, who say that they specialise in Speech sound difficulties, and ask them if they are Welsh speaking. ....

Thanks for the tip about getting an assessment from a bilingual SALT ...

Eirian

[moondog]

I hope you find someone.
The key word in your search is to look for someone who deals with phonological difficulties.

Even if you have to wait fro an NHS one,insist on seeing one who speaks Welsh.
Demand creates supply!