Toddler Times
Toddler Language ‘Problems?’
S, Where Are You?
Today, we all spent the day at our good friends’ house. They have a 3 1/2-year-old with whom Shnook likes to play. Their little boy, W, is super-cute, well-behaved, and a TERRIFIC swimmer. He can dive to the bottom of the pool and pick up a toy. He looooves to be under water. I can’t wait until Shnook can swim that well.
Anyway, this awesome, little dude speaks really well, but he makes one hilarious language (or speech?) error consistently. For some reason, he can’t (won’t?) say the letter ‘S’ when it’s at the beginning of a word. He always replaces it with the letter ‘H.’ For example, today he went HIMMING, and afterwards he had HOUP for lunch. When Shnook was having a tantrum, he came up to him and told him, firmly, to “HOP CRYING!” Later, he wanted to tell Fuzz a HORY.
You get the picture? He has no problems with S’s at the end of words, or in the middle of words, just at the beginning. I tried to look up this phenomenon on the web to see if it’s a thing, but I could only find some other common language mistakes like mixing up ‘R’ and ‘W’ or Shnook still says we got Fuzz at the “hostibal,” and loves to play “aminal” bingo.
I’m wondering if anyone has ever heard of this happening before? As far as I know, most toddler speech issues resolve themselves over time, so no one is worried that this will be an issue for life. But just to be sure, maybe I’ll ask our friend HUSAN, the Heech therapist.
Photo credit: Flickr/Aunt Owee
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5 Comments
Ashley commented on Sep 19 11 at 8:49 amMy daughter 2 1/2 has trouble with S-blends at the beginning of words, they all become Fs (regular S-words are ok). She’ll ask for a foon for her soup. She can say all the sounds independently “S. P. OON.” but if we then ask her to say it all together we get “S-P-FOON.” I imagine she’ll grow out of it, kids are always growing in their speech. We just recently lost bana to the full banana.
maggie commented on Sep 19 11 at 10:09 amYes. M also has strouble with S blends, she just drops the S, so STOP becomes TOP and SPOON becomes POON. Also has trouble with R at the beginning of words, she replaces them with F, so RELAX becomes FELAX. It’s pretty cute and I’m sure she’ll grow out of it, but if not I will definitely find a speech therapist for her. These things are much easier to correct when dealt with early.
Karen commented on Sep 19 11 at 10:41 amMy niece does that! It’s awfully cute when she’s trying to tell me that “something happened.” It’s a litte more awkward when she talks about a “fashion show.”
Brandi commented on Sep 20 11 at 3:51 amMy MIL is a speech therapist & the “s” or “s blend” sounds are pretty common. Most kids grow out of it & she says sometimes simply learning how to read & seeing it on paper really helps solve speech problems.
Naomi commented on Sep 21 11 at 11:51 pmGood to know this is a common phenomenon. It makes sense. Blends are hard!
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