Phonological Processes: What and When?

Has your child been diagnosed with a phonological process? What does that mean? When should it resolve?

Unless you've visited a Speech-Language Pathologist, you've probably never heard of a phonological process. Maybe you've been told your child has a phonological process but have no clue what that means.

What is it? Basically, speech sound disorders are not always as simple as replacing one sound with another sound, such as always saying a "TH" for an "S". (If your child does something like that, see my post here). Instead, children will replace whole sound TYPES with other sound TYPES, and we track that as a pattern. If their speech errors follow a certain pattern, we call that a phonological process. Any time you see the term "phonological process", you can replace it with "sound pattern".

So what are the phonological processes, and when should they be fixed? See the chart below!

If your child has one of these patterns and is nearing the age of elimination but is still going strong, it's probably time to seek out the help of a Speech-Language Pathologist. Or, you can always DM me or comment below!

Does your little one have one of the processes? Which ones are new to you?

Cheers,

Kjirsten