Why Your Child Might Still Be Stuck on R
R is one of the trickiest speech sounds — and one of the most frustrating to treat. If your child has been working on R for a while without real progress, here's what often makes the difference.
R isn't really one sound
R changes shape depending on the word. The tongue does something different in "row" vs. "car," "treat" vs. "rude," "rock" vs. "read."
That's why a child can say one R word perfectly and distort the next one. The tongue position that works in one context doesn't transfer to another.
What we look for in assessment
Instead of asking "can your child say R?", I look for the specific positions where R already works — or almost works. We probe across categories like:
- Tongue root retraction — words like croak, crew, grew
- Lip rounding — root, rude, road
- Tongue tip elevation — trip, drip, treat
- Lateral margins braced — read, treat, dream
- Tongue body lowering — rock, arc
Once we find which positions work, we have a starting point. We build outward from success.
Why your child sounds great in therapy and then loses it at the school play
This is one of the most common questions I get:
"I hear R clearly in therapy, but at the school play every sound was distorted. What happened?"
The answer is mental load. When a child reads aloud or speaks under pressure, they're juggling decoding, comprehension, vocabulary, pronunciation, and nerves. Each one takes energy. In a quiet session, R has all their attention. On stage, R drops to the bottom of the list.
This is normal — but it's also why I don't consider a child "done" with R until it holds during reading and conversation in real-world situations.
If your child is stuck on R
A free 15-minute consultation gives you a clear picture of where things are and whether this approach might help.