Looking for help...

[anon4now]

...from the best! (ok, enough kiss butt)

I've noticed this year DS is having a hard time pronouncing words that don't fit the rules (which with english, is easy to come across). He just did a report on Austrailia, he worked on it for 1.5 months. And he still can't pronounce Eucalyptus, Acacia, Aboriginee and many others, especially cities etc.

My first question - does this fit an LD?
My second question - how do I help him with this?

TIA
Anon

[jfla]

hey anon!

I just had a thought on your question that might be relevant. I once attended a professional workshop about teaching speech to the deaf. I discovered that when they were discussing the subtle differences between two vowel sounds, try as I might, I was unable to distinguish the two. They sounded identica to me. At the time I attributed this difficulty to a possible minor learning disability.

It might be helpful to run your question by a Speech and Language Specialist at your child's school. They may have some ideas about the difficulties your child had in pronunciation. If you ask, I'd be interested to hear what they say.

[therose]

Yes, indeed you can a learning disability and have trouble pronouncing words. I am one of them, would have much difficulty in the list of words that you have in your post. It is why, when speaking in public, I will use words that I can pronounce easily. Your former President, President Bush is also the same, as myself. It is why I found it terrible when the press deride him over the mispronouncing of words.