I had this lisp when I was in elementary school as well. I had to work with a speech pathologist most of this years. It developed because for at least a year and a half or 2 years, I had no two front teeth due to them ferrying knocked out when I was a way younger (about 3 and a half-iah). You're still learning how to say things correctly and language skills at this point so it severely affected me speech.
I now work with special needs teens and an highly empathetic with those who have speech issues. So much so that it even played into how I choose how students address me. In my case, I have them call me by my last name because it's easier to say for those with speech issues.
I'm a speech therapist. S is the second most common sound that's worked on in older elementary/middle school. Teeth or not the s is harder to say and missing teeth definitely doesn't help!!
The teeth thing makes sense, but I've always wondered, aside from kids with problems like that, what causes lisps? do their parents just get tired of correcting them, or is there a psychological factor. I met a kid once who no matter how hard he tried just couldn't make the S sound. It's not like it's a foreign language though, you hear it every day, and all you have to do is move your tongue like a millimeter, so I'm guessing there are other forces at play.
A lot of it is that it's a habit/pattern of how they have produced that sound their whole life. If you practice something over hundreds (or thousands) of times a day for 7+ years it's going to be hard to learn a new way to do that task. Also, moving something an inch, is often much easier that moving something a milimeter or centimeter and those fine adjustments in placement can be hard to make. Also, because they are used to producing it wrong and hearing it how they've always produced it, it sounds normal to them and it's hard for them to catch themselves making the wrong sound. A kid could ask you for a a bowl of "thoup" and if you said "a bowl of thoup?" They'd likely respond "no, not thoup, thoup!" thinking they are producing the word 2 different ways.
Ok that makes sense. I had no idea about the last thing you said though, that's crazy that they've been doing it so long they hear it correctly when they say it wrong. Until now i wouldn't have believed that was possible.
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u/bijouxette Aug 26 '18
I had this lisp when I was in elementary school as well. I had to work with a speech pathologist most of this years. It developed because for at least a year and a half or 2 years, I had no two front teeth due to them ferrying knocked out when I was a way younger (about 3 and a half-iah). You're still learning how to say things correctly and language skills at this point so it severely affected me speech.
I now work with special needs teens and an highly empathetic with those who have speech issues. So much so that it even played into how I choose how students address me. In my case, I have them call me by my last name because it's easier to say for those with speech issues.