Seeing a Speech-Language Therapist is a great idea, but it can be costly, inconvenient, or just plain old difficult to get anyone to see you right away. Trust me - I’m an experienced Speech-Language Therapist myself!  

To get around these issues, and so you can feel confident in making a start at home, I’ve put together three things that you can do with your child right now to help them fix their speech sound errors. These are the strategies I give to the families I work with.

The three strategies are remodelling, recasting and mirror time. Let’s take a look at how you can use each one at home.

Remodelling is a great habit to get into. When your child says a sound or word incorrectly, you gently repeat the word correctly by bringing it into conversation. For example, your child might say “look, a tite!”, and you say “Yeah, a kite!”. 

Remodelling works because your child gets to hear the right way to say the sound, but the conversation isn’t interrupted and your child isn’t made to feel bad about the way they’re saying the sound.

Recasting is an even more powerful version of remodelling. Recasting means that when your child says a word incorrectly, you’re going to repeat that word and other similar-sounding words as many times as you can in one minute. Your child really gets a burst of hearing the sound said correctly! You’re aiming for 12-18 repetitions. Sound like a lot? Here’s how:

“Oh, the sun! There’s the sun. The sun is so bright because there are no clouds today. If the sun went behind a cloud, it wouldn’t be such a bright sun. I love the sunny sun sun. The beautiful bright sunny sun sun. Shine on me you beautiful bright sunny, sun, sun! But don’t give me sun-burn! What should I wear to protect myself from sun-burn? Sunscreen!” 

And there you have 17 recasts. Be creative and a little silly. The more fun, the more engaged your child will be. Repeat this strategy 3 to 4 times a day. It doesn’t have to be the same word each time, but the same target-sound. So: sun, silly, super, sing; you get the idea. Thanks to Caroline Bowen: Speech Language Pathologist for creating and sharing this valuable strategy.

Mirror time is where you describe and practice the problem sound with the help of a mirror. Position yourselves so they can see their face and yours. Talk about all the features that the sound has; so what parts of your mouth make the sound? Lips, teeth, tongue, jaw. Where in your mouth do the parts touch? Does your tongue lift up or stay down? Does it touch anywhere? What are your lips doing? Are they stretched out or rounded? What is the air doing? Is it hissing out or popping out? Is your voice turned on or off? 

As an example, I might describe the S sound like this; lips a little bit open, tip of the tongue lifted up behind the front teeth, seal the side teeth with the sides of your tongue and hiss the air out the front like this; sssss. It’s a hissing sound!

Then practice making the sound in the mirror with your child. Praise and acknowledge their efforts, even if they don’t get it right, so you can say things like “I can see you’re really trying!” “It can be tricky to get your tongue in the right place, huh!”

So, there you have it! Three things you can do at home with your child to improve their speech that a Speech-Language Therapist would be likely to recommend you do with your child on their first visit. You can watch me explaining and demonstrating these strategies in this video. You can also head to the handouts section for a printable handout of these strategies, as well as more ideas and resources. 

If you'd like more structured support and information about how to work on your child's speech sound errors, consider signing up for one of my speech sound video courses. 

These are detailed video courses for parents to use at home with their children, and each one teaches you how to work on a specific speech sound. 

Mailing list members will be given priority access, so make sure to sign up today. 

And if you'd like regular support, with weekly bite-sized trainings that you can implement straight away and easy access to me: an experienced Speech Language Therapist, then my Speech Support Membership is perfect for you. Details below ⬇️