Speech- 6 Yr Old Cant Pronounce /L/ Sound

I had this problem ... after several years in Japan, my L's were abominable. It was fixed fairly easily in a few months of speech therapy, provided free through my school.

Of course, when we moved I had to go to speech all over again, but this time for my R's. I had originally gone to Speech in S Carolina, and the 2nd time in California. Southern Ah's were just not acceptable ;)

I still use my tongue differently in L's, however, than anyone else I've ever known. I bite my tongue (the tip touching my upper lip, and my teeth gently on both sides of my tongue). Apparently it's considered flirty, but it's the only way I know to say them.

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Dear M.,
My oldest could not say her R when she started kindergarten, which was a problem because her name starts with R. I called the school district to see about speech therapy and a very kind woman simply taught me an exercise over the phone. It worked first time! We kept working on it for about a week and she had it down. Once in a while I had to remind her, but it was great. Be proactive. Find out who can help you. It may depend on what your child uses instead of an L, but if you touch your finger to the back of his/her front teeth and tell him to put his toungue there? Maybe without making any sound, you could show him how you "lick" your teeth, over and over and then start with lalalala. I am not a therapist, but it's worth a try.

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you could ask the school to evaluate her speech or you can also talk to your pediatrician and get a referral to have her speech evaluated privately.

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My oldest had this issue when he graduated speech therapy at age 4. We were told that if it had not resolved by 5 or 6 to have him reevaluated. My kids have all had a lot of fun in speech. By the time he was old enough, the issue had resolved, so I can't give you any help for it to do at home.

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She may need a therapist and this could also be something you can work with her on at home. My older one had issues w/ her r's. After a bit of speech therapy in school, she's just fine.

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If she's in a public school, I'd consider going ahead and asking for an evaluation. I've done it with my own son, and the experience was pleasant and painless. Nobody at the school made a big deal of it.

But there are things you can do with her to help her with /l/ on your own. In my pre-child life I taught English as a second language, and many of my kids had trouble making the English /l/ work for them. For what it's worth, here are a few of the practices we did that seemed to help.

First, make sure she can actually hear the /l/ sound well. Ask her to tell you same or different with contrasting pairs such as rot/lot, wit/lit, wet/let, red/led, peel/peer, dear/deal, and so on. (Find contrasting pairs with r,l, and w, since those are the sounds most often confused.) If she can identify when you are giving her a contrasting pair instead of a repeated word, then ask her to identify which one of each pair has the /l/. If she can do all that easily, then hearing the sound is probably not the problem.

Then teach her where in the mouth the /l/ is made - just behind the teeth on the gum ridge - and get her to practice putting her tongue there. A fun way to do this is to give her a lifesavers candy to hold in that spot with her tongue. Then practice /l/ sounds with rhymes and tongue twisters, slowly at first, to practice being aware of the tongue moving up to that spot and touching when we say /l/. Look up the Sesame Street song (from years ago) with Ernie and Bert that starts "La la la la lemon" - you can find it on YouTube. It's cute, and funny, and great practice to sing. Also, gather a box full of things around the house that start with /l/ and use them for a "what's in the box" guessing game. You can either give hints, of have her reach into the box without looking and feel the items and identify them. Games like this are a way of practicing without being obvious.

Finally, if you think she can pronounce the sound but is not yet incorporating it into her everyday speech, you can gently force the issue by "not understanding" when she mispronounces words with /l/. I would only use this tactic if I were quite sure that the mechanics of /l/ were now working for her. I did this for a little while with my son, who had /r/ trouble. He had shown me he could say /r/ clearly, but was still not using it in conversation. I would ask him to repeat what he had said, or I'd ask," Did you mean 'white' or 'right'?"

I hope you find this useful.

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I would talk to her teacher at school and request that the speech therapist listen to her. It sounds like she might need a bit of therapy, but she is still young enough that it may just be developmental. Either way, you get a professional assessment and know where to go next.
If her teacher doesn't get things moving soon after you ask her, go to the office and ask how to get your child assessed. The school has to do this!

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Talk to her teacher about it. The speech language pathologist at the school can screen her to see if it is something to be concerned about and give you home therapy ideas. There are many sounds that are developmentally normal to have trouble with at age 6.

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This may, or may not work itself out. If it is an issue for her, or your family, you might just take her to a speech therapist, and take her sister too, because one articulation error will be one of the quickest theraputic fixes in therapy. Therapy would be short. The school will not remediate an articulation issue, it would be very rare for any district to find an educational need to address this. Educational need is the only reason that they are required to give them speech, such that children are functional in the class room.

M.

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Has the Dr ever checked to see if they are tongue tied? (This is when the skin under the tongue is too far forward so the tongue cannot lift properly). this would affect the L when speaking , I am tongue tied but it was not bad enough to affect my speech so it was left , but if it does need to be done then they just cut it to losen if off a little

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It's not unusual for a child to have difficulty with some speech sound or other. If you stop and think about what it takes, physically, to replicate sounds, you'll see immediately how very complicated it is!

You could ask your doctor about how you could do some speech therapy at home, or you could ask your daughter's teacher; many schools supply speech therapy. They've offered it for years. Two of my children did some therapy for a while; so did I (way back in the dinosaur days).

I've been told over the years that most speech problems don't have anything to do with basic intelligence. They're more like an arithmetic problem that you stumble over and just can't get right; then someone else guides you through the process and you think, "Oh, that's how it goes!" and then you're fine with it.

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My daughter wasn't able to pronounce "L" either, came out as Y. This was bad because she has a YL combination in her name and couldn't tell people her name in a way that they could understand what it was. She received speech therapy in school in kindy and first grade, and spoke normally after that (they worked on her r's too). Has your daughter had a speech evaluation at school? You can request one. It's really not something you can work on yourself if you do not know how - it's not a matter of repeating or practicing the sound, it's a matter of correcting her tongue placement, etc - so if you're not trained in that, you won't know how to do therapy.
Good luck

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A speech therapist would be a great way to get things started. There is plenty you can do at home to assist improvement as well. I still work with my son on a daily basis to continue what we started at speech and he's doing awesome! If you have a minute, I would recommend that you google Vianne Bjornberg in Westminster. She is amazing and has a special touch with the little ones.☺

As a educator, I say it never hurts to get them tested for speech. If she dosne not qualify they can at least give you some ideas on what to do. earlier the better