Five Ways To Work On A Lisp At Home

A common speech sound error that children have is a distortion of ‘s’, or a lisp. There are different types of lisps:

• Interdental lisp. This is when a child says ‘s’ with their tongue between their teeth. It is often part of typical speech development, and usually resolves by around 4 years 6 months.
• Lateral lisp. The tongue lies flat in the mouth, so air escapes down the sides. The sound is often described as ‘slushy’. It can make ‘s’ sound like ‘sh’, and can affect other sounds such as ‘z’, ‘sh’, ‘ch’ and ‘j’.

While interdental lisps can be developmentally appropriate for some children and may resolve before they reach the age of 4 years 6 months, lateral lisps are highly unlikely to resolve on their own. If your child has a lateral lisp, we recommend a speech pathology assessment as early as possible.

Getting an ‘s’ sound

To get your child to try the ‘s’ sound, get them to look at your mouth as you say it. Ask them to give it a go. Get them to put their tongue tip up behind their top teeth or find the ‘bumpy spot’ behind their front teeth. They should then blow air out to get a clear ‘s’ sound. There are also plenty of YouTube videos with a variety of hints and tricks to help your little one get a clear ‘s’!

Activities to work on ‘s’

Here are five play-based activities to try at home:

1. Play I Spy. Walk around the house, the backyard, or wherever you may be. You can even look at a book together! Play ‘I Spy’, encouraging your child to use their ‘s’ sound when they say ‘spy’. To add an extra challenge in for older kids, make a rule that you can only spy things beginning with ‘s’!
2. Go to the playground. Not only are playgrounds great fun for kids, they also have plenty of opportunities to use the ‘s’ sound. Talk about using the slide, seesaw and swing, play in the sandpit, or even point out how sunny it is.
3. Make a playdough snake. Roll out a playdough snake together and make it hiss by saying ‘s’. Then add thumbprints to the snake: every ‘s’ word means an extra thumbprint!
4. Word hunt. Print out some ‘s’ word cards (we love the free ones at Mommy Speech Therapy). Hide them in a sandpit and help your child dig through the sand to see what they can find. When they find a card, say the word 3 to 5 times before finding the next.
5. Baking or craft. Bake or make something with your child, choosing something with lots of ‘s’ word opportunities! For craft, use scissors, stick the tape down or pass the pencils. For baking, smell the food baking, slice the butter or stir the batter. Bonus: you’ll have something to enjoy together at the end!

While activities like these are a great way to encourage speech sound development at home, if you’re concerned, we recommend contacting a speech therapist to have your child’s speech assessed.