Over the years, I’ve noticed that some children make way faster progress with fixing their speech sound errors than others. The reasons for this come down to a few things, and it might not be what you expect. 

The obvious factor that many people think of is age, but this isn't always the thing that has the most impact. With young children, you are able to make the change earlier, but it can be tricky for them to follow instructions and get their mouth to do what they want it to. With older children, the pattern can be more ingrained, so can be challenging to shift, but they have more ability to understand detailed instructions and get their mouth to make refined movements.

The things that I've noticed over my fifteen years of working 1:1 with children that have the biggest impact on their ability to change their speech errors are:

• Practice: how often are the child and their parents able to commit to practicing their speech activities linked to their goals? (see my article on getting your child to practice and also my article on hooking practice into your everyday activities for tips on this.)

• Motivation: how motivated is the child to change their speech errors? How much do they want it? I have worked with children who want to be actors or broadcasters or strong public speakers, so find their motivation there. Sometimes it's having a family member, e.g. a grandparent that struggles to understand them that is a motivating factor. Sadly, often teasing by other children can provide a strong motivator for the child to want to fix their speech errors.

• And here's one you might not have thought of: The ability to listen in to their own speech, hear the errors and fix them up (after we’ve taught them what to do to make the correct sound.)

If we can teach children how to do this, then it reduces the need to constantly ask them to fix up their speech errors. Are you needing to do this at the moment? If so, this technique could be part of the answer for you and your child.

My personal bent on speech therapy, is it should feel like fun for everyone, so everyone wants to do it. Reducing the need to ask your child to fix up speech sound errors increases the chance that everyone keeps wanting to practice for longer, and that includes you!

The skill of listening in to your own speech and hearing the error is called self monitoring.

So, how do we do self monitoring in real life?

When I am teaching a child to self-monitor, I ask them to evaluate a speech sound they just made, so I would say something like “Oh, did that come out the new way or the old way.” or, "Did your tongue come out between your teeth, or stay up behind your teeth?” I then wait for them to answer, and once they have, I let them know if they evaluated it right or not, for example, “Yes, it did come out the new way!” or “Whoops! Your tongue came out, let’s try again.”

This gets them listening in to their own speech and starting to take ownership for the way they make their speech sounds.

Another trick is to deliberately make a few mistakes in your own speech or in speech practice activities. A good way to facilitate this is to take turns saying speech practice words: your child says a word and then you say a word and ask them to tell you if you said it with the target speech sound correct or not. Make the same sort of errors they make, e.g. say "thun" for "sun." You can say things like “did I make the sound the new way?” and then confirm or refute their evaluation, for example, “yeah, I got it!” or “Hmm, I think I need to fix it up.”

Then, to get them to transfer this to their everyday talking, you can occasionally (not too often, or your child will get sick of it) ask them to evaluate a word they said in their everyday talking with you, so you could say something like “How did that come out?” 

It’s important not to do this before you have given your child the tools to be able to fix up the speech sounds they’re working on, otherwise, you will just be bringing their attention to a skill they don’t have yet, and we don’t want make them feel bad about something they still need to learn. Please contact me if you want help with teaching your child to work on speech sound errors.

So there you go! It’s that easy! Just ask your child to listen into and evaluate their speech sometimes. No more nagging and your child starts taking responsibility for fixing up their own speech sound errors!

I have a video in each of my speech sound courses, along with a one-page handout on self-monitoring, so you can review and easily remember the information.

If you'd like to know more about my speech sound video courses, what they contain, and if they would be right for your child, then send me a message through the message function here (the speech bubble on the bottom right corner of your screen) and we can chat.

And if you'd like regular, weekly support and information to help your child's speech, then my Speech Support Annual membership is perfect for you: details below ⬇️