My daughter, who is 3, struggles a bit with her pronunciation skills. While they are not poor enough to warrant speech therapy at this point, many adults and other children have difficulty understanding her because of her pronunciation errors. While speech difficulties are common at this age, I still wanted to help my daughter speak intelligibly. I spoke to my daughter's teacher about her speech difficulties, and the teacher gave me several simple tips for helping my preschooler learn correct pronunciation.
Model correct use. All of us are guilty of occasionally baby-talking our preschool-age children. While occasionally babbling to your little cuddle-bunny-wunny won't permanently impair her speech development, it's best to consistently use correct language when you're in the presence of young children. This enables preschoolers to hear and understand the correct pronunciations of common words, phrases and phonemes.
Respect your child's needs.
If your preschooler gets frustrated when she mispronounces something, don't worsen the situation by making fun of her or by being rude. Place the responsibility on yourself, not on the child. Say, "I am having trouble understanding you. Could you repeat that?" Even if you have to feign or exaggerate your inability to comprehend your preschooler's speech, you should try to avoid embarrassing or upsetting her.
Highlight the error. Your preschool-age child may simply be unable to hear the difference between specific sounds and phonemes. Highlight the erroneous pronunciation by asking your child, "Are you firsty or thirsty? I'm not sure I know what firsty is." When she hears how odd it sounds, she'll make more of a point of enunciating carefully.
Demonstrate how to make certain sounds. Preschoolers can often learn to pronounce sounds correctly when they see the speech mechanism demonstrated. If you hear your child call an animal a "wabbit," you can make eye contact with her and show the different between "w-w-w-wabbit" and "rrrrrrabbit." Make sure she watches the movements of your mouth and attempts to emulate them.
Don't speak for your child.
When my daughter says something that another person fails to understand, I have to bite my tongue hard to avoid jumping in and explaining what she's saying. While I will intervene if she needs to communicate something important and fails after several attempts, I usually try to let her repeat herself and clarify her pronunciation skills. Often, by the third or fourth try, she'll say the sentence clearly enough for the other person to understand.
Get professional help.
By age 3, you should be able to understand almost all of your preschooler's speech. By her fourth birthday, unrelated adults should be capable of doing the same thing. If your preschooler's pronunciation skills seem to be significantly lagging behind her peers, talk to her preschool teacher, pediatrician, or local early intervention (EI) program. An evaluation can let you know how her speech compares to her peers. If necessary, professional speech therapy can help to minimize the likelihood of lasting pronunciation problems.
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