Both of my kids are "very bright, and wonderful, and beautiful, and have no flaws!" Yeah right. They are good kids and are intelligent. However, they both have an "accent." My daughter qualified for speech therapy in pre-k but passed (for lack of better word) at kindergarten. She still has trouble with people understanding her. All of her friends call it her accent. She has no problems socially due to her speech but it does bother her. My son has the same "accent." We thought he would grow out of it but he is going into 2nd grade and still has it. (My daughter will be in 5th grade). I just realized what made the "accent." They both have soft R's. Does anybody know what we can do at home to compensate or re-train their speech? TIA

By Pamt on Sunday, June 3, 2007 - 02:29 pm:

"R's" are the most difficult speech sound to remediate. They are actually 2 kinds of /r/---the kind like in "road, run, rabbit" and a vowelized /r/ like in "bird, door, butter." You probably won't be able to fix it at home. It will require speech therapy and even then, /r/ is tough because you can't see how to produce it and there are no good landmarks as to where to place your tongue. /r/ is also one of the latest speech sounds to develop and is sometimes not accurately produced until age 7. This is why your daughter "passed" her speech screening--because not being able to pronounce /r/ correctly at her age was developmentally appropriate. That is certainly no longer the case though. She and your son should definitely qualify though, but if you are getting services in public school it will likely just be 1-2 times a week in a group and that may not be enough to fix the problem. Your daughter will have an especially difficult time because of her age, but if she is personally highly motivated then that will help. You may need to seek out additional therapy. If you have a university nearby with a speech clinic, that is a good, affordable opportunity. HTH!

By Tink on Sunday, June 3, 2007 - 03:16 pm:

We've been working on my son's /r/ speech problem for four years now. He keeps changing the way he pronounced it but it still isn't right. He's being helped by the school speech therapist, a private speech pathologist and my sister who is majoring in speech pathology. He's 8yo and it's getting better but it's a long road. Good luck!

By Shann on Sunday, June 3, 2007 - 06:28 pm:

ds has been in speach for 2 years and I don't see any improvement. we work with him at home and he seems to be doing a little better but I am not satisfied with the school. Ds has problems with R's and L's when he say says louie it sounds like lilly. I would check in when she starts school prek is when ds started and it continued in kindergarten. I would personely stay in touch with the speach teacher and watch her progress. Next year dh and I are going to speak with the principle and see what other options we have.