Articulation – Talking Takes Time
Though I am not a speech pathologist, I was asked by a friend if she should be concerned that her 5 year old daughter is not able to say her “r” sound, or her “th” sound as in three and thumb. Katy is going to start kindergarten in the fall and Mom wonders if she will need speech classes? She would prefer that her daughter not be pulled out of class for speech therapy because she could miss valuable instruction time.
Articulation is a process of speech sound production, and children have variations in their rate of mastering the various speech sounds. Studies have concluded that children’s articulation skills progress continually through eight years of age. And just as children mature at different rates, their articulation develops at different rates as well.
By the time girls are five years old, 90% of them are able to produce the following sounds: “m, p, b, d, n, k, g, t, th(as in this, there) and f ”. Ninety percent of girls who are five years of age are also able to produce the following sounds at the beginning of words; “w, h, y, and l”. They can produce the following clusters by or during their fifth year of age “tw, kw, pl, bl, kl, gl, fl”.
The “r” sound production normative age is 7 years for both boys and girls according to the Iowa-Nebraska Articulation Norms. The “th” sound as in three and thumb is acquired in 90% of the girls by the age of 6, but in boys it will take longer – 8 years of age is the normative age for boys to be able to produce this sound. So there is no cause for concern at this time for little Katy.
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