Is my Child’s Speech on Track?

As parents, we are aware that there are certain milestones that most children achieve around the same time.  At around 6 months, we expect our child to learn to sit.  At around a year, we might expect to see first steps.  There is great variability even between typically developing kids, but being aware of these milestones can be helpful in gauging whether our children are on track.

 Speech and language is no different.  When discussing speech and language, however, it’s important to understand the difference between the terms “speech” and “language”.  “Speech” has to do with the sounds we use when we talk.  If we say that a child’s speech is delayed, we are talking about a delay in a child’s ability to use the sounds we would expect for their age.  “Language” by contrast has to do with the words themselves and how we use them to understand and to be understood.  A child with a language delay might be late in using first words, might use words in an order that we wouldn’t expect or may have difficulty understanding words or instructions.

Many parents as well as other health professionals get confused by this distinction between speech and language and as such, there is a lot of misinformation about what typically developing speech looks like. 

 The graphic below does a great job of communicating which speech sounds we expect at different ages.  The sounds listed on each bar represent the sounds that 90% of children have mastered by that age:

So, what does this mean?

Well, it means a few things.  It means that the majority of speech sounds are mastered by most kids by age 3 and that by age 4, 90% of kids have mastered all but a few sounds.  So, if you child is 3 and saying “tair” for “chair”, this is age appropriate, but if they are still saying “tair” at age 4, we are looking at a delay. 

 So, your child has some delayed speech sounds.  Does he need therapy? 

In short, maybe.  There are a number of factors that need to be considered to know whether or not therapy is necessary, but what we do know, is that early intervention is important.  If your child is delayed on any of the sounds for his age, it is worth having them assessed by a speech-language pathologist to determine whether they might benefit from additional support.