Sometimes our little ones know exactly what they want to say and it just doesn’t come out right. Mom and Dad didn’t understand and now it’s full out tantrum storming in here.
It takes a while for kids to learn to make all of the sounds in the English language. Some kids are faster than others, typical development at this age is just soooooo broad. My little guy was so hung up on the “k” sound and I dont expect he will be making an “r” or “l” anytime soon. He also uses words I didnt know he knew so without context it can be really tough to guess.
So, what can we do? Well you can try to guess when they said. That only works for about 1 or 2 tries in this house before a meltdown. Our new favorite trick is to make it a game and try to keep him laughing before the frustration kicks in. “Let’s play the ‘guess what you said game’ because mommy’s ears aren’t working well.” That’s right, blame the ears. It’s not his fault or your fault that his message wasn’t understood….those ears are slacking on the job.
So we try to get him to point to the thing, or act it out, or talk about it, or let us walk around and guess at things to help us figure it out. Then, when we do get it right, we practice that word a few times if not for him, the for us to help us commit that word to memory for next time.
Building Better Speech and Language 