Communication Milestones
What should your child be doing at this age?
As parents, we know that no two children are the same, and development in speech and language can vary greatly from one child to the next. Below are some great resources to check out. Still have questions? Reach out to us!!
Speech Sound Development:
Age 2: h,n,p,b,d,w,m
Age 3: t,k,g,f,y,ng (end sound like in jumping)
Age 4: sh, ch, j, s,z,l,v
Age 5: voiced th (this), zh (like in treasure), and r
Age 6: Unvoiced th (think)
*Children can develop sounds earlier than the stated age, and many sounds have a range of time where they are developing. The ages listed above are when the sound should be mastered.
Phonological Processes
Children often exhibit phonological processes when learning to speak. These are natural processes that make learning to talk easier, and is a natural progression as the muscles both in and around the mouth grow, mature, and strengthen.
By the age of 3, the following processes should be resolved:
Final Consonant deletion (daw for dog), velar fronting (tow for cow), assimilation (dod for dog), reduplication (baba for bottle), dimunitization (doggy for dog, cuppy for cup), syllable deletion (nanuh for banana, mato for tomato).
Other persisting processes include: consonant cluster reduction (nake for snake, bock for block), gliding (wock for lock, yog for dog), vowelization (cah for car), stopping (dun for sun), and final consonant devoicing (back for bag).
Speech
Intelligibility/ Fluency
Intelligibililty (how much of what your child says can you understand? How much can less familiar persons understand?):
1.5 - 2 years: 25-50% intelligible
2-3 years: 50-75% intelligible
4-5 years: 75-90% intelligible
5+ years: 90-100% intelligible
Fluency: How smooth is your child's speech? Are they sounding "stuck" on certain sounds in words? Seem to have a hard time getting their words out? Are they repeating just one syllable of word many times? Dragging out the first sound in a word for a longer time? These could be indicators of stuttering, a fluency disorder.
Language
Receptive
This is the information that we take in from our surroundings (verbal, non verbal and visual) and understand.
Can your child follow 1, 2, 3-step directions?
Are they able to locate objects when you tell them where they are?
Can they point to objects you label in books?
Do they understand no/not?
Can they imitate actions? point to body parts? colors? shapes?
Expressive
This is how we communicate our thoughts, feelings and ideas to others.
Does your child verbalize what they want for a snack?
Can they answer simple yes/no questions? "wh" questions?
putting together 2, 3, 4 words into a sentence?
using plurals?
using -ing to say actions (he jumping instead of he jump)
Using "I" instead of "me"?