A child at the age of two or three who cannot say d, f, g, k, n, and t correctly may have a speech disorder, and only after the age of three do children qualify for speech therapy sessions through the public school district. With new language development tools, children can start correcting their speech and a younger age.
One of the most difficult sounds for children to master is the sound of ‘r.’ The ‘r’ sound consists of three actions/behaviors that must be executed correctly for anyone to produce the correct sound. There are many ?r? activities in speech therapy that can teach a child how to correctly make the sound.
There are thee oral regions used to make the ‘r’ sound: the throat, the tongue, and the lips. These regions must constrict to make the tongue sides flat and between the teeth as the tongue’s back humps upward.
The lips need to form a rounded “O” shape, as you do when saying the r in rabbit. Then, the tongue must form a hump towards the middle-back of the mouth, while the sides are hitting the teeth. Lastly, the throat must slightly tighten to achieve the ‘r’ sound correctly.
Telling a child to imitate you can be the most effective, so instruct the child to copy your “fish face” or to simply make an “O” shape with their lips. Allow them to practice on their own and they will have mastered the ‘r’ lip shape.
When it comes to the throat, gargling water is one of the articulation activities you can try. Instruct them to then say “ah” while keeping the water in the throat. This is a close representation to what the throat does while saying the ‘r’ sound.
The tongue is perhaps the hardest part of creating the ‘r’ sound, and is normally where the child’s difficulty in making the sound stems from. Since the tongue cannot be visualized, language educators have developed specific tools so that a child can feel what he needs to do with his or her tongue. This is an extremely simple and great way to learn the hardest part of the ‘r’ sound.
Children who are 30 months or younger do not learn from TV and videos the same way that they learn from real life interactions. So, when it comes to ?r? activities in speech therapy, it is important to interact with the child.
