Speech therapy for Rs

[Anonymous]

My just turned 7 year old has been in speech therapy for about 6 months now because she doesn’t say her Rs properly. She is seeing a highly regarded SLP that many friends have had success with for other issues. I would say maybe she has made a little progress in the 6 months, but not a ton, and he mispronunciation is still very noticeable.

We know two older kids who are 12/13 and still don’t pronounce their Rs and it’s very noticeable, so I am wondering if this is an issue that can’t always be fixed. If anyone else’s child has had this issue, we’re you able to correct the problem and how long did it take?

[Anonymous]

The child has to work hard to fix it. If they don’t care it will only be fixed in a clinical setting and never in a natural setting. Though speech therapy is needed to give them the skills and strategies to fix it, some kids don’t care that much until they’re older. It’s more difficult to fix for some people depending on why they have a mispronunciation and how bad it is as well might just not be worth the effort. Can she do it correctly when in a session?

[Anonymous]

2 of my kids had this issue. For one the slp said it wouldn’t be considered an issue until 8. For the other, he has 2 r’s in his name, so people couldn’t understand when he said his name, so the slp focused on r’s earlier. It was corrected in both kids, and the slp said she’s never had a case where it wasn’t, it just can take time.
I will say that haing one child with sever speech issues, I’ve found there is a huge variety of skills in slps. Some are truly terrible and should not be working with kids. If you’re not seeing progress, try someone else. Unfortunately we have yet to find a decent one who takes insurance.

[Anonymous]

I’m not a SLP but we sort of tackled this on our own. My daughter likes to sing and noticed she wasn’t pronouncing her r’s in a song when we recorded her. So she was motivated to fix it. When she spoke and didn’t pronounce her “r” we just said, oh I don’t understand and then prompted her to correct it. Just some strategies of a therapist isn’t in the budget.

[Anonymous]

My daughter is 12 and had no success with speech and the R sound. The therapist said that it may be a structural issue with her hard palate (high and narrow) which makes it much harder.
We have not gone to an orthodontist to have it widened, but I’ve heard that that can be successful

[Anonymous]

My 12 year old had this issue for a while and didn’t really see any results from speech therapy. It was mostly us working on it at home. She pronounces all the Rs at the beginning of words fine now but still has a little trouble with Rs at the end of a word like “brother” or “neighbor” but people don’t really realize and think it’s an accent.

[Anonymous]

SLP here...different SLPs have varying levels of comfort/experience for treating speech sound disorders. That being said, 'r' is one of the hardest sounds to teach and it does require a child to be willing to put effort into practicing their sounds outside of speech therapy. Have you spoken with the SLP about what you can do at home to reinforce what is being practiced/taught during speech therapy? Additionally, if a kid has attention difficulties the speech therapy process may be longer than for a child who can pay attention to their own speech errors and actively adjust to correct them. Lastly, if a therapist is saying they can't treat 'r' until age 8 then they are not up to date on current evidence based practices and you should find someone else.

[Anonymous]

My 6 almost 7 yo has articulation disorder and has just started doing Rs in speech therapy, along with other goals. He goes 3x/week in school and once a week privately and is already starting to make progress (can make the sound with prompting). He has already met 3/4 other goals (the other one is not R) in his IEP this year, so it is nice to see the steady progress. If R is the only sound dc is working on I would expect progress after 6 months. Are they regularly providing data?

Also, can you request an eval by SLP at school? You don’t need an IEP. It could be a good supplement. My eldest went to learn her “ch” sound in first grade

[Anonymous]

For my kid, we did once a week at school and twice a week at private speech, plus daily practice with me. It took a year of intense effort.

Going once a week will take longer, but practice practice practice. Twice a day if you can - just for a few minutes each time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 6 almost 7 yo has articulation disorder and has just started doing Rs in speech therapy, along with other goals. He goes 3x/week in school and once a week privately and is already starting to make progress (can make the sound with prompting). He has already met 3/4 other goals (the other one is not R) in his IEP this year, so it is nice to see the steady progress. If R is the only sound dc is working on I would expect progress after 6 months. Are they regularly providing data?

Also, can you request an eval by SLP at school? You don’t need an IEP. It could be a good supplement. My eldest went to learn her “ch” sound in first grade

Most places you do need an IEP for speech articulation, and some won’t provide it (looking at you, DCPS). But OP should look into it - we had an easy great experience in MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Mine got Speech at school through his entire elementary time and the end was because he didn’t have the R sound. The therapist told us it was a late to acquire sound.

He worked hard at it in all settings. We constantly practiced it at home and corrected him when he mispronounced it. it still took a very long time.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, the hard "R" sound (I've heard it called the "American R") is a hard sound generally, for both children and non-native American English speakers, so it's not surprising that many kids take longer to master it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is 12 and had no success with speech and the R sound. The therapist said that it may be a structural issue with her hard palate (high and narrow) which makes it much harder.
We have not gone to an orthodontist to have it widened, but I’ve heard that that can be successful

It may be too late for the palate expander route. My daughter also has a high, narrow palate (along with, originally, issues with many other consonants, most of which have been resolved by 3 years of work with the school SLP). We consulted two orthodontists who both said they like to put in palate expanders by age 9 or 10, after which the palate hardens and is not expandable. Although it may depend on the individual child, of course.

We decided to go the palate expander route after they and the SLP thought it could help. Started at 8.5, and it's been about five months, and it does seem to be helping. Although we also started with a weekly private SLP around that time so it's hard to say if it's the palate expander, the private SLP, or a combo, but her R sounds are much better. They do seem to take a lot more work to correct than the other sounds, though. She has reached the point where she can say R properly but it takes a lot of effort and reminders and that annoys her and she resists, because - unlike in the past when she had many articulation issues - she is perfectly comprehensible now, so she does not see a need to slow down her speech or repeat herself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, the hard "R" sound (I've heard it called the "American R") is a hard sound generally, for both children and non-native American English speakers, so it's not surprising that many kids take longer to master it.

And it's not just the literal R sound, it is - for my kid at least - the way the different vowels sound with R. First DD learned to say just R, and that wasn't too bad, but combining it with different vowels to sound right has been much harder.

[Anonymous]

You have to practice at home and correct her once or twice a day if you hear an error. Not to shame her, but to get her to think before she speaks.