My Child Is Hard to Understand. Is That Normal?
- speechieinspokane
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
What Parents in Spokane Need to Know About Speech Sound Disorders
You are at the park and another parent crouches down to talk to your 4-year-old. They smile and nod, but you can see it on their face. They have no idea what your child just said.
You translate. Again.
If that moment is familiar, you are not alone, and you are not overreacting by wondering if something needs to be addressed.
When a child is consistently hard to understand by the time they are 3-4 years old, it is often a sign of a speech sound disorder, specifically an articulation disorder or a phonological disorder. These are among the most common reasons children see a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), and the good news is they respond well to targeted therapy when caught early.
Here is what you need to know.
What Is a Speech Sound Disorder?
A speech sound disorder means a child has ongoing difficulty producing sounds correctly, to the point where their speech is hard for others to understand.
There are two main types parents hear about:
Articulation disorders involve difficulty physically producing a specific sound. The child knows what they want to say, but their mouth, tongue, or lips are not moving in the right way to make the sound correctly. A few common examples include: a child who can't produce the R sound correctly, has a frontal or lateral lisp, or is unable to retract their tongue to say the /k/ or /g/ sounds.
Phonological disorders involve patterns of errors across multiple sounds. Instead of struggling with saying a certain sound correctly, the child has a rule in their brain that is producing the wrong sound category consistently. For example, leaving off final consonants in words ("ca" for "cat," "do" for "dog") or replacing all sounds made in the back of the throat with sounds made at the front of the mouth ("dough" for "go," "tup" for "cup").
Both types can make a child's speech significantly harder to understand, but don't worry- both are treatable!
What Sounds Should My Child Be Making by Now?
This is the question most parents are actually asking. Here is a simplified version of what research tells us:
By age 3, most children can be understood by familiar adults about 75% of the time
By age 4, most children should be understood by strangers most of the time
By age 5, nearly all consonant sounds should be developing clearly
By age 6, nearly all speech sounds in English should be mastered
Common sounds that sometimes take a little longer to develop include /r/ and /th/ which are not expected to be fully mastered until 6 years of age, which is why not every error requires intervention.
However, if your child is past 4 years of age and strangers regularly cannot understand them, or if your child is showing frustration when people ask them to repeat themselves, that is a meaningful signal worth evaluating.
Signs Your Child May Have a Speech Sound Disorder
People outside your family frequently ask your child to repeat themselves
You find yourself translating for your child in conversations
Your child drops the ends of words or substitutes sounds in a consistent pattern
Your child avoids talking or gets frustrated when they are not understood
Preschool or kindergarten teachers have mentioned concerns about speech clarity
Your child is hard to understand even when talking about familiar topics at home
One thing worth knowing: children with unaddressed speech sound disorders often face downstream challenges with reading and literacy, because the same phonological awareness skills that drive clear speech also underpin learning to decode written words. Early intervention is not just about speech clarity. It protects their academic trajectory too.
What Is the Difference Between an Articulation Disorder and a Phonological Disorder?
Parents hear both terms and wonder if they mean the same thing. They do not.
An articulation disorder is mechanical. The child physically struggles to produce a particular sound, regardless of where it shows up in a word.
A phonological disorder is about patterns. The child's brain is applying an incorrect "rule" to a group of sounds. This is why phonological disorders tend to affect intelligibility more broadly, because multiple sounds are impacted at once.
Treatment approaches differ too. Articulation therapy focuses on teaching the physical placement and movement needed to produce a target sound correctly. Phonological therapy focuses on changing the underlying sound patterns by targeting them systematically across words. For example, therapy activities might include minimal pairs (words that differ by only one sound, like "key" versus "tea") to help the child hear, feel, and understand the contrast.
An SLP specializing in articulation and phonology will assess which type of disorder is present and build a treatment plan accordingly.
Why Summer Is a Critical Window, Not a Break
Here is what many parents do not anticipate: summer is not a neutral period for kids in speech therapy. For children working on speech sounds, a 10 to 12 week gap in services is long enough to erode meaningful progress that took months to build.
Research shows that even typically developing students can lose one to two months of academic skills over summer. For kids with language and communication delays, pausing therapy can lead to skill regression that is costlier to repair than it would have been to prevent.
Speech sound skills follow the same pattern. The mouth and brain need consistent, structured practice to consolidate new sound patterns. Without it, old habits reassert themselves.
Summer also offers something the school year rarely does: more focused, lower-pressure time. No homework competing for attention. No end-of-day exhaustion. Sessions can feel lighter and more like play, which research consistently shows accelerates progress in young children.
If your child receives school-based speech therapy during the year, it is worth knowing that school services are typically paused over summer. Private therapy fills that gap and often moves faster because the SLP can work one-on-one without competing demands on the child's schedule.
What Happens in Articulation and Phonology Therapy?
Parents sometimes imagine worksheets and drills; however, modern evidence-based speech therapy for young children looks quite different.
For articulation therapy, the SLP typically starts by identifying the target sound, teaching the child how to produce it in isolation, and then systematically moving through increasingly complex contexts: syllables, words, phrases, sentences, and finally conversation. Progress is real; however, it takes consistency, lots of practice, and time to generalize the sound into everyday speech.
For phonological therapy, the SLP targets the pattern rather than a single sound. Minimal pair activities, play-based tasks, and structured practice help the child's brain update its internal rules about how sounds work in the language. The SLP will choose and implement a phonological treatment approach based on your child's individual needs.
Both approaches work best with parent involvement. When parents understand WHAT the therapist is targeting and WHY, then they can confidently reinforce practice at home to expedite progress and improve outcomes significantly.
What Should I Do If I Am Concerned About My Child's Speech?
Do not wait for a referral if you have concerns! Private SLPs can evaluate your child directly without a physician referral in most cases, including in Washington State.
An evaluation will tell you whether your child's speech sound errors are within normal developmental variation or whether they meet criteria for a disorder that warrants treatment. Either answer is useful. You are not wasting anyone's time by getting your child assessed. You are, in fact, being proactive by seeking support.
What you should NOT do is wait and see. "They will grow out of it" is sometimes true and sometimes not, and by the time it is clear they are not growing out of it, months or years of treatment time have passed.
Speechie in Spokane: Articulation and Phonology Therapy for Kids 3 and Up
With over 8 years of experience specializing in articulation and phonological disorders, I work with children in the Spokane area who are hard to understand, showing speech sound errors past expected ages, or losing ground on progress they made during the school year.
Summer spots are open and they fill quickly.
If you have been wondering whether what you are hearing from your child is something to act on, the answer is: get them evaluated. You will leave knowing exactly where they stand and what, if anything, needs to happen next.