I feel like such a nit picker sometimes but DS15mons has been trying to learn how to speak properly, he loves copying us and has to do everything exactly the same. So I'm parroting over & over again the same words, I know I'm not supposed to correct him when he tries to speak but he's really trying. With his favourite words like Tractor (we live rurally), he spent 30 minutes one day just going "ac" "ac" "ac". Of course it took me forever to figure out what he was doing until he came out with "TRACTOR!" (he was practising the "ac" part which he couldn't say before then).

He's lost his Ts again and is getting frustrated saying "ac or" "ac or" over and over when he seems them go by.

Anyone have suggestions for Phonics games?

Have you tried Starfall.com?

Not sure if you want to resort to screen time but the Leap Frog DVD- "Letter Factory" is cute.

It sounds like it is a developmentally normal place for him to be and I'd try to accept that. I'd suggest being very low key and calmly redirecting as long as he will accept it. "Is it in this room?" "Will you should me please?" might be helpful phrases.

Mr W (19mos) loves starfall. We go through all the alphabet several times a week. Its a good site.

DS5.5 loved this when he was about 1 or 2. It's definitely beneficial to a visual learner.

I'm trying really hard not to push him because he doesn't say very many words clearly but our non-verbal communication is excellent . If he wants juice he gets me a cup, if he's hungry, well he walks right over to the counter and grabs the bread (He's pretty tall for 15 months!). He knows words like "ou side" and can turn the TV on and climb pretty much anywhere he wants to go.

He just seems to loose words frequently and get them all jumbled up, I want some fun games so he can stop frustrating himself . I have no problem with him saying thing like "ac or" (tractor) because I understand him perfectly and we have entire conversations no one else understands all the time . It's just Lucas who seems to get really annoying and will repeat the word over and over again until he can say it just like mommy. He's also have a really hard time with the new cat Peaches, and can't pronounce her name at all, but he tries! Every time he sees her "Hi P....". (It comes out like "Pea Hea S" I'm just waiting for him to start practising the "ch" "ch" "ch")

I haven't tried Starfall yet but I definitely will. I did borrow a "Your Baby Can Read" dvd from a friend, he doesn't have the attention span to listen to it for long, but really enjoys the slow word pronunciation.

The other day he told me "Yea, Buss Teeet", man is he cute!! but the frustrating thing for me is that he says things like "Fishy" and "Ma ison" (Madison our dog) and "Hi Kitty!" and "Daddy! Da da da Daddy!" but no Mommy, he doesn't even try *sniff*

I think it is possible that phonics resources aimed at teaching a child to read could actually make this worse because they model breaking words don't into little parts in a way that isn't modeling good speech. I think it may encourage him to fixate on the parts his mouth isn't ready to make yet. I would encourage him to show you, sign, etc. From the words you mentioned it sounds like he's actually got a fair amount of speech for his age.

I don't know what to tell you guys, I haven't been encouraging him to practise at all - it's DS that's doing it, all on his own. If he says "ac or" I say "Yes honey, that's right Tractor, very good!" then he starts with the "T, T, T... Trac or".

I just want to encourage him I have the same concerns about impeding his speech, but if he's going to do it anyway he might as well be making the right sounds.

He LOVED the starfall website, great because it's really rainy again today! We got through quite a few books before he got bored (/needed to go run around & cause trouble) once we sorted out who was going to control the mouse! (He LOVES to move it around but doesn't have very good aim yet).

He loved the letters too but got bored of those guys fairly quickly. DS is just not much for sitting down and playing quiet games!

Play "I Spy" with him!

Tell him you spy something that begins with this letter or that one or is this color... or has the "ac" sound or begins with the "tr" sound...

have him find it in the room, or word it so he goes to find you something in the house with that letter, color or sound, and point it out or bring it back to you. Both my kids really love these kind of games b/c they try to outdo each other!

Ooooh! I haven't tried I spy yet! and we're going on a road trip tonight!! Good idea!!! .

We also try to do allot of animal sounds because he's REALLY good at it. The cats go (well I can't really type the noise he makes but...) "mmmmeeeeeeooooo" instead of just "meow". The dogs go "Arf, Arf, Arf"; thank goodness he stopped barking whenever our dogs did, that was getting embarrassing!! :lol: The cars go "RrrrrrRRrrrrrRRRRR" but I think every little boy can make that noise. The cows go "mooooooooooooo" except his silly walking cow toy (his favourite toy) which goes "aaaaaaaaaaa" because it's cheap .

Little smarty pants!

Just tossing out another perspective...
It might be good to remove yourself from the role of evaluating (that's right) and praising (very good!) and emphasize communication simply as a social experience. So that might be something more like "That's a pretty tractor" or "I'd like to take a ride on that tractor", etc. It might help shift him away from feeling like he must master this now.

hmmmm, I'm going to try that, your right that might be why he's correcting himself so much.

We do alway do "look there is Brian on the Tractor" (our neighbour) "wave to Brian", which makes DS very happy! .

I want to repeat he does practise his words completely on his own, frequently it's not prompted by me at all. This morning he was running around going "st" "st" "st", I have NO idea what he was trying to say, maybe Elmo said something he's trying to imitate? (He's a big fan of Sesame Street, Word World & Sid the Science Kid - really the only TV he watches other then Wheel of Fortune).

Although DS does frequently have discussions with inanimate objects such as standing in the driveway pointing at the tractor saying "Tractor, TRACTOR! tractor (blah blah blah) TracTOR!". He's such a funny monkey . His new favourite is the microwave, but he can't say that yet.

I'm going to concur with passthepotatoes. This sounds like a totally normal phase in speech development. I think the general advice for parents of toddlers is to just ignore speech problems/difficulties/differences, and focus on the meaning. I think correcting or even discussing pronunciation can make kids really self conscious. It sounds like your son is already pretty self conscious, and you might want to downplay pronunciation even more on that account.

I took everyone's advice, and I'm trying to really downplay pronunciation. He's still picking up words faster then I can come up with them though. We saw a back hoe in the weekend and "Look Lucas, that's a backhoe, it digs up all the dirt" we got "ba ho! ba ho!!".

I'm still teaching him his ABCs, but I don't know what to do about Seasame Street, etc. He LOVES word world too and because these shows are about reading there is allot of slow pronunciation. I have no interest in teaching him how to read RIGHT now, but I do think he'll be reading small words in another year or so because he LOVES books.

I'm also not really convinced that he's being self conscious about his speech. Everyone who has ever met DS immediately remarks on how much he talks! It's a constant stream of mostly nonsense* which he forms into sentence structures. In fact he gets VERY upset when you don't answer him when he asks questions!

*mostly nonsense, to us! He's quite convinced he's talking and every now and then does actually seem to be saying something. Like he was telling me "find dada, find daddy" and started running around looking for his dad, when he found him he said "FIND Dada!!!!".

However I am going to keep trying to downplay my pronunciation for awhile and see if that changes anything, couldn't hurt.

Discussed it was Mom this weekend too & she confirmed (now she's raised 2 above intelligence, one way above & one ADD/ADHD etc. so she knows!) the little man is awfully precocious for such a young toddler but there is a good chance we're looking at ADHD, except the my brother didn't talk until he was 4, so who knows! Then again DS did have an entire tartufo instead of dinner and nothing but candy and chocolate since breakfast...

(Oh grandmas, can't live with them, can't live without them! :D).

Oh & on the mommy front, he's trying to call me Vanessa... *sigh* I'm inclined to let him until he's old enough to understand I'm mommy.

I guess I am just confused about what it is you are hoping to change. It sounds like your son is going through a perfectly normal stage of speech development.

Your son's speech is brilliant for a 15m old.

I often refer to this chart: http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/Table4.htm for my son. He is 5years and has issues with the /l/ sound: it nearly always comes out as either /y/,/w/ or /r/. I have had two occasions where we have chatted about soemthing for an hour only to find that the "pilots" were actually "pirates", ditto lorry/lolly.

Some sounds are physically beyond their ability to say - their mouths are just not co-ordinated enough. On the chart you will see that the /ch/ is aquired by 75% by 4 years old.

I like his adoration of Tractors! my DS was obsessed with cars and then Thomas the Tank engine from 6/7 months until he was between 2 and 3.

There has been some concern about him practising his sounds, I really think he's just practising though, not correcting himself. The same way he will sit for 20 minutes and practise putting a straw into his juice box. He's big on puzzles!

That chart (thanks for posting!) doesn't even make sense by Lucas' standards :S he's taking a good bite out of the first category. Although he will be able to say something like "horse" one moment and loose it another, I don't worry about that too much as obviously that is a word he shouldn't be able to say. Very interesting.

His first word was actually "tickle" which he pronounce perfecting in a very clear voice at 7 months. He said it twice and has never said it again. Same with saying "Lucas" the other day, I don't expect him to say that again for awhile.

DS is BIG on Tomas too I know grampa's really happy to have another train-enthusiast in the family finally! Anything with wheels & DS is ALL over it, it's a full-time job keeping him from stealing all the strollers when we go to the park (babies in them or not :D).

Hi Nes - My DS5 had lots of language very early too. I did have access to some information like the posted link, so I never tried to correct, beyond repeating the word properly in response like you do. "Yes, I like tractors too." I would tend to agree with PtheP on trying to avoid saying "yes, that's right!" although I know at the age of your DS, many times you are naturally saying that in response to one of many questions. E.g., Kid: "Dis ice?" Mom: "Yes, this is rice."

My DS cannot do the 'r' sound yet, which is developmentally normal, but since his vocabulary is so big, he will say things that most people won't expect, and so they can't catch it without the 'r.' Also, he speaks REALLY fast, and that doesn't help. (The school system even referred him to speech therapy, but the therapist said basically what I wrote above and said he didn't qualify.) His big vocab also helps, though, because he can usually come up with a variation of a word without an 'r' if someone is confused.

When he was 18 months, we had a very funny incident with DS's pronunciations. He was napping, so I took the chance to go to lunch while grandpa was watching him. Of course, he woke up, and started asking for "ice beans." Grandpa knew that DS wasn't asking for ice cream, since DS has a dairy allergy, but he couldn't figure it out, so he gave him an ice cube. DS screamed and screamed "ECEBEANS! ICEBEANS! ICEBEANS!" He wanted his favorite food at the time, rice and beans. i returned to a cried-out kid with a box of snacks in his lap and a worn-out grandpa!

Thanks SPG, yeah I was having a little trouble today as the tractors came down the road, but I tried some variety with "what colour is that Tractor? is it green? Yes, it's green!" (DS doesn't do colours yet).

We also like to count motorcycles :D, DH has been calling me Seasame Street... (thinks he's funny!).

But most of the time I'm still asking him "Is that a tractor or a car?" because he's still learning the differences between tractor and car and truck (although I think he's got it now as he was telling me "ba ho" (back hoe) then "car!" yesterday).

Thats a great story about the icebeans! My sister was completely mystified by Lucas this weekend and just kept saying "He talks SO much!!" as he's standing at the top of the backyard steps telling everyone what to do, wagging his finger while he talks .

LOL. Sounds like W.

He has a whole repertoire of mimicry. His cutest one is the Monkey with the Wolf right behind it. For the Monkey, he will dance around, scratch himself, and say "ooh ooh ohh!" and for the Wolf, he throws his head back and lets out a long howl.

I teach him a new one every day - which takes about 2 seconds.