Grace (age 3.5) doesn’t pronounce “s” at the beginning of words . She lisps a bit with “s"s in the middle and at the ends of words too, but it is most obvious at the beginnings of words - “guy” for “sky” for example. Her vocabulary and sentence structure is fine. It wasn’t worrying me at all - but then she asked where the “d” at the beginning of “stick” was, and it started to concern me that this might actually get in the way of her other learning - she’s very keen on finding and identifying letters. Spoke to a friend who worked in a kindy, and she said “s"s are quite late to come. Worth worrying yet or not? Husband has some level of audio dyspraxia and finds it very hard to remember the correct pronunciation of certain words, so that’s on the radar too…

Angie

I wouldn’t worry.  Hearing letter sounds correctly can take a long while to come, and mispronunciations are a symptom of that - totally normal.  Jenna couldn’t hear the difference between “t” and “ch” until she was five.  (At three she still mixed up “sh” too.  She always said “st” in its place.)

My dd is 4 and has exactly the same problems, for example she says poon for spoon and has a bit of a lisp, I am not overly worried about it. If she is still the same in a year or so I might do something about it then.

Ru’s 3 1/2 and still not using many s’s. x

One thing I’d suggest is a hearing test to rule anything out. I was told that if there is a drop in hearing at the higher frequencies letters like s and t aren’t heard properly

My dd has had a hearing test just last month and she does have some hearing loss in her right ear and is borderline in her left. They are leaving it three months to test again to see if it is a temporary thing. My doctor says it could be glue ear which usually will just clear up on its own over time but he said sometimes they do issue a small hearing aid to help until it clears up, so yes a hearing test might be an idea.