Sounds Arrive on a Schedule
Speech sounds do not all appear at once. P, B, M, N and similar early sounds are usually in place by three; K, G, F and SH follow; and R, S, Z, L and TH are frequently still settling at six, seven or eight. A five-year-old saying "wabbit" is on an ordinary timetable, which is why knowing the schedule matters before deciding anything is wrong.
That schedule is also the argument for choosing targets deliberately rather than working on whatever is most noticeable. An earlier-developing sound that is still wrong is usually both easier to shift and more damaging to how well a child is understood, which makes it the better place to start.
Our speech sound development chart lays out the full timetable, and each sound page above gives the typical mastery age for that sound alongside the practice words.
Position Changes the Difficulty
The same sound is not equally hard everywhere in a word. Most children find a sound easiest at the start, harder in the middle, and hardest at the end — which is why therapy usually establishes one position before moving to the next rather than practising all three at once.
Every sound page here splits its practice words the same way, and the full lists on the sound guides go further, breaking each position out into its own page with a longer word bank behind it.
The Other Sounds
We publish games pages for the 16 sounds that regularly appear as articulation targets. The remaining 7 are rarely the focus of therapy, so rather than pad this list they keep their full sound guides and word lists: