four year old speach prob

[michelle morales]

i have a 41/2 yr old son, i have had him at home an we are trying to teach him letters numbers, colors and shapes, he has a problem remembering.
we will tell him something like abc def and he says abc but either says dds or des, he can't seem to say f, v, and z, he says s, b, and d.
i try sounding the letters out over and over again but he can't remember. how do i get him to learn, and with numbers he knows them but not in sequence

[Jill]

I have a 3 and a half y/o son with unilateral cleft lip/palate. He has been in speech therapy for almost a year.


His therapist stresses repetition! They work on 1 letter for a week or two. The therapist also made games out of a lot of it. She made picture cards of things and my son would have to say the name of the item and then he gets to do something (his turn at a game or sometimes she just had a board with velcro and he'd get to put the card on the board). For both F and P she encouraged him to make the sound more forceful by having him "blow" a cotton ball or feather when making the sound. She also makes sure he watches her mouth when she says something she wants him to repeat, we do this too.


My son loves music so we use that too, he sings alot of songs.


We have a way to go yet but I have seen alot of improvement. He says most letters well except for S (I'll take any tips there).


Hope this offers you some help. If you want to email me you can at: mrskuroos@ivillage.com


Jill

[Calvero]

I was born with both cleft lip and cleft palate and spent years in speech therapy. One thing that my speech teacher did that helped was explain where to put my tongue for each sound. Having messed up teeth did not help and some sounds took some time to get right.


Keep repeating it over and over. One of the sounds I had the most trouble with was "er" and it took a long time to get that right.


Another thing was a lot of reading. Kid books and newspaper comics are fun and keep the child's interest.


Here's a link for ideas:


<a href="http://www.cleft.net/info/speech/">http://www.cleft.net/info/speech/</a>


Good luck!


Kim,
The Cleft Club
<a href="http://cleftclub.cjb.net/">http://cleftclub.cjb.net/</a>