Mispronunciation a speech problem?

Dear Dr. Donya,

I read your article in The Jakarta Post on childhood stuttering and transient dysfluency with great interest.

My son is four years old. He is very articulate and communicates clearly. We believe that he is ahead of his peer group in linguistic skills, and this is endorsed by his schoolteachers.

Whilst, on one hand, he can easily pronounce and use difficult words like "camouflage" in his speech, he cannot utter the sounds "s", "c" or "k". For example, he cannot say "sun" but will say "tun"; similarly not "cat" but "tat". His pronunciation of other letters is quite clear and normal.

Could you please shed some light on why he cannot pronounce some letters, and is it due to age? Will this condition go away in the next couple of years? Does he need a medical examination or speech therapy?

Now that he is growing up, other schoolkids make fun of him when he uses wrong pronunciation and we feel that he is getting a complex as a result.

I would appreciate your advice on this particular issue and thank you in advance for the effort you will put in to respond.

-- Rohit

Dear Rohit,

Thank you for the letter; your son is normal for his age because children develop sounds as they grow, especially "s". They probably cannot pronounce it properly until they are seven years old; girls may be earlier than that.

His condition could be "substitution", which is pronouncing one word wrongly in a sentence, such as "tat" for "cat". Again, once he's five he should be able to say it more clearly and by the time he's seven every word should be clear and correct.

If you're still concerned, let's his doctor check him out.

-- Dr. Donya