Strategies to help your child with unclear speech

• Be face-to-face

Make sure you can both see each other’s faces when you talk. This will make sure you can both gets lots of clues about what is being said from lip movements, eyes and facial expressions.

• Keep background noise down

When talking to your child, try to keep background noise like the TV or radio to a minimum. This will help you both listen and your child will not be competing with other sounds.

• Offer a choice

If you are struggling to understand your child, try offering them a choice. For example, try saying “do you want apple juice or orange juice?” rather than “what do you want to drink?” This will give you an idea of which words they are using.

• Don’t ‘correct’

Model the word back clearly, without ‘correcting’ or making the child feel they have made a mistake. This will help to maintain your child’s confidence in talking.

• Repeat the word back clearly

This will help your child hear how the word should sound. For example, if your child says; “Look at that big pit (fish)”, you could say “oh yes, it is a big fish”, stressing the sounds your child cannot say i.e. the ‘f’ and the ‘sh’.  By repeating what your child says it also shows them you have understood what they have said.

• Ask your child to show you

If you are still finding it hard to understand your child, try asking them to show you, to point, to draw you a picture or to try and tell you in a different way.

• Have a ‘translation’ list

Put together a list of words like pets, family members and favourite toys that can be given to family / teachers etc. This is especially useful if your child’s teacher is struggling to understand them or if your child is getting very frustrated.

• Create context

Try to create a context for your conversations. This will help you tune in to what they are saying or make a more educated guess! You could ask more specific questions such as ‘what did you do at playtime?’ or ‘what lesson was your favourite?’ rather than ‘What happened at school today’.