Children with language delays often have difficulty with the he she pronouns. Some children call everyone “he” or everyone “she” despite their gender, some children say “him” and “her” instead, and some children just omit them entirely. Well no matter how your child is changing it, it can make it very hard to follow his train of thought if you’re not sure exactly who he’s talking about. Here are 5 steps you can use to teach your child how to correctly use the he she pronouns to describe other people.
He She Step 1: Make Sure She Knows The Difference Between a Boy and a Girl
This is the first step to using “he” and “she” correctly because if you don’t understand the difference between a boy and a girl, you’re not going to be able to use those pronouns correctly. Start by just asking your child “is that a boy or a girl?” when looking at pictures or pointing out real pictures. You can have her tell you boy or girl for family members, friends, familiar people, or pictures of people or characters in books. If your child is having trouble with real people, start with cartoon boys and girls. For some reason these seem to be easier for some children. Keep practicing this until your child can accurately tell you boy/girl when you ask. Make the practice fun by playing games while you do it.
He She Step 2: Using He and She in Short Phrases
Now you want your child to be able to say “he” and “she” in very short phrases. One way to do this, is to get a picture of a boy and a picture of a girl and then cut out pictures of objects (out of magazines or from online printouts). Place the boy and girl in front of your child. Hold up one object and say “who wants the ____?”. Help your child choose if he wants the boy to have it or the girl. Then, help your child say “he does” or “she does”. Below is an example of a product of mine that allows you to do just this:

Another way you can use “he” and “she” in phrases is by placing two pictures in front of your child of a boy and a girl doing something. Then, ask your child “who is ____-ing?” and help your child answer “he is” or “she is”. For example, you could put down a picture of a boy riding his bike and a girl clapping her hands. Then you could ask, who is riding? Your child would then need to say “he is”. Below is an example of a product of mine that contains action pictures:

Verb Card
He She Step 3: Using “He” and “She” in Sentences
Once your child can use “he” and “she” in simple phrases, have your child create sentences using “he” and “she”. Show your child pictures of people doing this and have him describe what that person is doing using “he” or “she” (such as “she is riding her bike”). You could use family photos, pictures of people online, or pictures from magazines. Give your child examples of the types of sentences you want by taking turns and making up your own sentences with “he” and “she” when it’s your turn. If your child says “the boy is riding” or “Johnny is riding” instead of using the pronoun, you can say, “Yes, the boy is riding. If it’s a boy, do we say ‘he’ or ‘she’?” Then, have your child repeat the sentence using “he” or “she”. If your child uses the wrong pronoun, repeat it back to her with the error as though it were a question. For example, if she says “she is riding” but it’s a boy, you could say “She is riding??”. Pause for a moment and see if she can correct the error herself. If not, correct it for her by saying something like “this is a boy, do we say ‘he’ or ‘she’?”.
He She Step 4: Using “He” and “She” When Describing Story Books or Making up Stories
Once your child can correctly use “he” and “she” in single sentences, you will need to make the activities more difficult. Get out a story book that has girl and boy characters and have your child describe what’s happening in the pictures. Make sure that your child uses the correct pronouns (he/she) when describing what’s going on. You can also do this same activity while making up stories. Make sure that your child uses “he” and “she” when telling you about the characters in his story. If you need some picture cues to help your child create a story and keep track of the characters, events, places, etc., take a look at the Once Upon A Time card game on Amazon. This game has cards for various fairy tale characters, events, places, descriptors, and more. You can play the game according to the directions or just use the cards to help you create a story. Click the picture below to follow my affiliate link to view the product on Amazon:

He She Step 5: Correct Your Child In Conversational Speech
Now that your child can use “he” and “she” in sentences and structured story-telling tasks, it’s time for your child to start using “he” and “she” correctly all the time. When you hear your child use these pronouns incorrectly, use one of the following prompts to try to guide your child back to using the correct word:
- Repeat the error back as a question: “She is running?”
- Ask if the person is a boy or a girl and then ask which pronoun should be used: “Is that a boy or a girl? Ok, so should we say ‘he’s my friend’ or ‘she’s my friend’?”
- Catch the error and (kindly) point it out to your child: “Oh, you mean ‘she is happy’.”
- Fix the error without pointing it out: “Yes, she is at her Grandma’s house.”
At first, try not to correct every pronoun your child says incorrectly because there will most likely be a lot of them. Try setting aside a certain time that you will correct your child and let him know ahead of time. For example, you might say “Tonight at dinner, I want you to focus really hard on saying “he” and “she”. I’m going to help you remember if you forget, ok?”. This will help your child understand that you’re not going to bug him all of the time, just during certain “good speech time” activities. As your child gets better, you can start catching and correcting more of his errors but start off small so that he doesn’t get frustrated. After a while, your child should begin to produce more correctly and you should be able to provide fewer prompts.
Just remember, this whole process takes time and it may take months of working this process before your child is able to use he she correctly all the time. Have patience and have faith that your child can do it, it will just take a lot of practice. That’s why she has you though, to help her through it!
Where to Find More Info:
This guide, along with 38 others, is included in Ms. Carrie’s E-Book: Speech and Language Therapy Guide: Step-By-Step Speech Therapy Activities to Teach Speech and Language Skills At Home or In Therapy. This guide includes detailed information on teaching various speech and language skills, including this one, along with worksheets, handouts, sample IEP goals, data collection, and video demonstrations. Or…
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This is great – I copied this blog entry onto a document (ensuring I kept the credits and the link to your store :), reduced the font and pictures and got it on two pages to use as a handout for my assistants and some of our families. Now if there was some way to ensure that families are following through with home practice… Thanks for this – it was really helpful and written at just the right level for most people to understand.
That’s wonderful!! I’m glad you were able to use this, that’s always my intention! Good luck!!
Hi! Currently, I am taking a college course and would like to use this article to support an assignment. Therefore, I need to cite in an APA format and I am missing some of the information needed. Is there any chance you can email me the information? I would like the author’s name and last name, and the date that was published. I wasn’t able to find it.
Thank you for your help.
Hi, Allison-Please email us at speechandlanguagekids.com and give us a bit of detail as to what you are actually looking for, as well as the blog post you found the original information at, and someone would be more than happy to research this for you.
My 6-year old says “her” instead of “she” (as in, “Her likes ice cream.”) I don’t correct him directly–just reflect what he says “Oh, she likes ice cream?” Is this kind of error unusual for a 6-year old? Should I be correcting him more directly?
The research shows that by 6 years old, most children are able to correctly use “he” and “she” in conversational speech. I would recommend trying some of the strategies in this article with your child and see if that helps. If not, you may want to seek out advice from a speech-language pathologist in your area. Your child’s school should have access to someone you can talk to. Good luck!
My almost 5 year old is struggling with the use of his and hers and he and she. Thanks for these ideas.
Absolutely! I know a lot of children who struggle with this so I’m glad to help!
thank you
My child knows the difference between he/she, him/her, his/her(s)… But rather struggles with the difference between she/her… Typically using her in the beginning of a phrase or sentence that should begin with she…
That can be a problem as well! Try coming up with little games where she has to practice saying “she is…” over and over again. You could use my verb cards and have her practice saying “she is running, she is jumping”, etc. You could also have her talk about what people are doing at the park or somewhere else. Also, correct errors when you hear them in conversation. Say, “you can say ‘SHE is running'”.
THANK You!!
You put together such wonderful resources that I can share with parents. You are helping so many kiddos through your great resources!
Many thanks!….school SLP in Minnesota 🙂
Thank you so much for your kind words! I am constantly amazed at how many people all over the world I am able to help with this website!
Thank you for your clearly stated strategy plan for teaching the pronouns to share with other parents.
You’re welcome! That’s what I do here 🙂
Wow – I’m so relieved there are other people dealing with this. My son has been in speech therapy since he turned 1. First for not babbling. Then for not saying words. Then we focused on saying whole words. Finally, at almost 5, his articulation is on target for his age, but we’re dealing with pronoun issues and not putting questions together properly. This is an excellent resource for the pronoun problem. Do you have a similar article that gives strategies for correcting question structure. For instance he will say “I can go with you mom?” instead of “can I go with you mom?”.
Why yes, yes I do!! 🙂
https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/asking-questions-with-good-word-order/
I hope that helps! I’m so glad this article was helpful to you as well!
Thank you so much, I am so glad I found this. My 6 year old son has always had some speech delays. We work diligently with him at home and his pediatrician says that we are making good progress so we just keep doing what we are doing. However, he does still mix up he/she, her/him. I am going to use these methods for a few months before going to the pediatrician with it.
Sounds great! Best of luck!
Hi from Sweden!
Great tips
My daughter is only 2.5 and generally her language is advanced. However, she uses “her” instead of “she.” An example would be (about her baby doll), Her’s crying because her has an ouchie.” At this age, is it worth using the strategies above or is it likely to self correct? Thanks!
thank you so much. i love to read it. i used it to teach my kids in my kindergarten.
Hi my daughter is 3.5 and confuses he and she when describing people, family etc is this age appropriate? Thanks
Hello, Belinda- Thank you so much for reaching out. Unfortunately, we get a ton of questions every day about how to solve specific speech/language problems. Since we have such a small staff, we aren’t able to answer every question that comes through on the website, social media, or via email. If you are a parent, we suggest you reach out to a local speech-language pathologist who can work with your child directly and answer your question.
If you are another speech-language professional, we have created a membership where we pay a full staff to answer questions like this on a regular basis. We would be more than happy to answer your question inside the membership program. We’re able to answer more questions in here because we have a full library of questions that we’ve already answered so our staff can either link you to the answer if it exists, or write you a custom response if needed. We’d love to see you inside the membership!
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I am from South Africa. I am working with a 6 year old girl who is on the spectrum and attending mainstream preschool. She is brilliant but her pronouns and prepositions need working on. This will be really helpful. thank you so much.
Much appreciated.
You are very welcome, Fathima! Please let us know if you have any questions.