How do you correct your child’s speech?

How do you correct errors in your child’s speech? And does the way you correct matter?

There is a technique within Speech Pathology that is incredibly powerful when it comes to correcting errors within the flow of conversation. This technique involves identifying a “target” in your child’s speech, and modelling the correct production back. A target might be a speech sound they have produced incorrectly, or it might be a grammatical error such as “flied” for flew. There are many ways to correct your child’s speech but some ways are much more effective than others!

Ineffective modelling would include things like telling the child what they said incorrectly and then providing one model of the correct production. For example: the child says “I want the wed one” and the parent says “don’t say wed, it’s red”. In this example, the incorrect production has been modelled once, and the correct production has been modelled once. They basically balanced each other out.

Another example of ineffective modelling would be asking the child to fix it themselves. For example: the child says “the weg is gone” and the parent says “it’s not weg, what were you supposed to say?”. In this example, the child produced leg as “weg”, but the parent didn’t provide any correct model which means the child didn’t learn how to correct the error. In fact, the parent provided another model of the incorrect production.

Lastly, exaggerated modelling is another form of ineffective modelling, where you exaggerate the pronunciation in the hopes that this will help your child understand how to produce it. For example: the child says “I want that pwease” and the parent says “puh-lease, you have to say puh-lease”. In this example another incorrect model is provided - an exaggerated model. This isn’t how we want the child to produce the word, so it doesn’t provide a correct model for the child to learn from.

So what do we do instead?

Recasting - this is basically taking something your child says incorrectly, and modelling it back correctly. Many parents do this already, but the added step that makes this technique so powerful is to repeat the correct production, in the flow of conversation, at least 3 times. For example: the child says “the weg is gone”, the parent would say something like “the leg is gone! Oh no, you’re right the leg is gone. How can we find the leg? Let’s look for the leg”. In this example, the child has heard the correct production (leg) four times in the flow of conversation. This allows the child the chance to hear the correct model and learn from that. There’s also no criticism and there is no pressure for the child to say it back. They are learning from hearing it, which is how children learn to communicate - through listening to those around them.

This is an incredibly useful tool to use and can become a natural habit throughout each day if you ever hear your child produce an error in their speech. It is particularly useful if your child is producing errors that are currently considered to be age appropriate but you would like to ensure they come through by the age expected. If you have concerns regarding your child’s speech, it is always best to have an assessment with a Speech Pathologist. They will then be able to advise you whether to carry on with the techniques described above and at what age you would need to seek out therapy if it is not resolved. Alternatively they may tell you that intervention is required in which case these techniques above become a very useful additional tool to improve your child’s progress in therapy.