The one test that matters most: can a stranger understand them?
If you check one thing before kindergarten, check this: can an adult who does not know your child understand nearly everything they say, without you translating? By about age five, most children are understood by unfamiliar listeners almost all of the time, even while a few sounds are still coming in. That is the standard that matters in a classroom, where the teacher and twenty peers are all strangers.
Notice what that standard does not require: every sound being perfect. A five-year-old who says wed for red, or free for three, is on a common timeline. Later sounds like r and th are frequently still developing into the early school years, and that alone is not a concern. The concern is when the whole picture makes your child hard to follow.
The rest of this checklist covers which sounds most children have by five, which are still in progress, which error patterns should have faded, a short language check, and what to do if something is missing. Age ranges vary by source and by child, and only a licensed speech-language pathologist (SLP) can determine whether a child has a speech sound disorder. This is a checklist for deciding whether to ask, not a way to diagnose.
Test it honestly: ask a relative or neighbor who rarely sees your child to chat with them for five minutes, then ask that adult how much they understood.
How to run the stranger test at home this week
Familiar listeners are unreliable judges. You have been decoding your child for five years and you fill in gaps without noticing, which is why parents are often surprised by what a teacher reports in October. Set up a real test.
Pick someone who sees your child a few times a year, not a grandparent who talks to them weekly. Give them a topic the adult knows nothing about, such as what happened at the park yesterday, so they cannot guess from context. Let them talk with no help from you, then ask the adult privately how much they got and what they missed entirely.
Listen to connected speech, not single words. Many children produce a sound accurately in one careful word and lose it in a long sentence. That gap is normal mid-learning, but it decides whether a classroom conversation works.
- Unfamiliar adult, unfamiliar topic. No prompting, no repeating, no translating.
- Listen for connected speech, not a list of words. Longer sentences are where errors show.
- Ask for specifics. Which words were lost, not just whether it was fine.
- Notice your child's reaction. Frustration or giving up mid-sentence matters as much as the errors.
Sounds most children have by about age five
Speech sounds arrive in a broadly predictable order. Early sounds tend to be in place by about three to four: p, b, m, n, h, w, d, t, k, and g. By about five to six, most children have added l, s, z, sh, ch, j, and v.
These are ranges, not deadlines, and sources put the boundaries in slightly different places because they use different criteria for mastery. The speech sound development chart lays out the usual picture, and the s sound guide shows what a typical error looks like for one of the sounds most often still in progress.
- By about 3 to 4: p, b, m, n, h, w, d, t, and usually k and g.
- By about 5 to 6: l, s, z, sh, ch, j, and v.
- Often 6 to 7, sometimes later: r, and th, which can run to about 7 or 8.
- Blends such as st and tr usually arrive alongside the sounds inside them, sometimes a little later.
Sounds that are commonly still in progress at five
The two that worry parents most at kindergarten entry are r and th, and they are usually the two least worth worrying about. Both are typically the last to settle, often around six or seven, and th can run later still. A kindergartener who says wabbit or fum is not unusual.
What is worth watching is whether the sound is absent or emerging. A child who produces r sometimes, or who can do it when shown how, is on the way. A child who has never produced it in any context by mid-kindergarten is worth mentioning to the school SLP, especially if other sounds are affected too. The r sound guide and the th sound guide explain why these two take longer.
A lisp, where s and z come out slushy or with the tongue between the teeth, is also common at five and may or may not resolve on its own. If it is still noticeable, raise it with an SLP rather than trying to fix it at home.
Error patterns that should be fading by kindergarten
Some children do not have trouble with individual sounds so much as a rule they apply across many of them. SLPs call these phonological patterns, and unlike single-sound errors they hit intelligibility hard, because one rule changes dozens of words at once.
Most of these patterns fade in the preschool years. If one is still your child's default at five, and not just an occasional slip in a long word, it is worth mentioning. A child who both leaves the ends off words and simplifies every blend is hard to follow even though no single error seems dramatic.
- Leaving off the ends of words (cu for cup): usually gone by about three.
- Front sounds replacing back sounds (tar for car, do for go): usually gone by about four.
- Simplifying blends (poon for spoon, top for stop): usually resolving by about four to five.
- Turning long sounds into short ones (tun for sun, doe for though): usually resolving by about three to five depending on the sound.
- W for r and l (wed for red, yeyow for yellow): often persists to about five or six, and is the most common one still present at kindergarten.
A short language checklist, separate from speech
Speech is how words come out. Language is what your child understands and how they put words together, and it is a different skill with its own milestones. A child can be perfectly clear and still struggle with language. Kindergarten leans on both, and the difference between a speech delay and a language delay is worth reading if this is new.
By about five, most children can follow two and three step directions without gestures, tell a short story about their day in order, ask and answer who, what, where, and why questions, use full sentences rather than fragments, and hold a back-and-forth conversation with an adult on a topic they did not choose.
- Follows a two or three step direction the first time, without gestures.
- Tells about something that happened, in order, with enough detail to follow.
- Answers why and how questions, not just what and where.
- Uses sentences of several words with mostly correct grammar, and asks questions.
- Can tell you whether two words rhyme, and can clap out the syllables in their name.
What to do if something is not there yet
Ask for a screening, in writing, in the first weeks of school rather than waiting to see how things go. A screening is short, usually about ten minutes, and answers one question: is a full evaluation warranted? It commits you to nothing, and it either reassures you or gets your child seen months earlier.
Keep the request simple and factual. Email the teacher and the school SLP and copy the principal. Say that you are requesting a speech and language screening, give two or three examples of what you hear including who could not understand your child, and ask for written notice of the outcome and next step. Procedures and timelines vary by state and district, so ask what theirs are.
If the screening leads to a full evaluation, that is a longer process ending with a team decision about eligibility. How the evaluation and eligibility process works walks through the whole path. In the meantime, keep talking with your child normally, model the correct word rather than correcting them, and read together.
Asking for a screening early costs you an email and commits you to nothing. Waiting until spring costs your child most of a school year.
Bringing it together
Kindergarten readiness comes down to three checks: an unfamiliar adult understands nearly everything your child says, the early sounds are solid with most of the later ones in place, and the preschool error patterns have mostly faded. R and th being unfinished is normal. Being hard to follow in conversation is what to act on, and the action is a short email asking for a screening.
If your child is already working on a sound, a few minutes a day helps and does not have to be formal. The practice games on SpeechTherapyMagic score each attempt in real time and show whether the target sound came out right, and there are word lists for every English speech sound, so you can follow whatever the SLP recommends. It supports professional therapy rather than replacing it. If your child starts school this fall, the back-to-school checklist covers the rest of the first month.