The Speech Sounds Development Chart is a common tool used in speech therapy to help track a child’s ongoing development across the various sounds of speech. As children develop all skills at their own rate, this chart is only a guide to when particular milestones are most commonly reached.
Don’t panic if your child is missing one or two of the skills listed within their age range! If you have any concerns, reach out to a speech therapist for further advice and next steps to ensure your child is reaching their full speech and language potential.
[table id=1 /]Why is my child not speaking clearly?
For parents and teachers, it’s important to remember that all children reach development milestones at different ages.
There are, however, several common reasons why a child might not have clear speech, including:
- Problems with their tongue on the roof of their mouth, known as oral impairment.
- The fold beneath the tongue (the frenulum) might be short – limiting their tongue movement.
- Oral-motor problems, where there’s an issue in the part of the brain that is responsible for speech. This might affect the coordination of the lips, tongue and jaw making speaking challenging.
- They might have a learning disability or certain conditions, such as cerebral palsy or autism.
- The child might have an undiagnosed hearing loss or something blocking their ears.
Think hearing first
We often say, “think hearing first”. Children can develop hearing loss at any age, even if they passed the newborn hearing screen.
If you suspect your child has a hearing loss, get in touch and our friendly team will be more than happy to help.
Resources to Aid Speech Sound Development?
Sometimes children have difficulty learning to say sounds correctly and they need more support from speech pathologists. A speech pathologist can help with speech and language development, listening, understanding language and more.
If you are a parent or a teacher, one simple way to help a child’s speech development is to model the correct pronunciation and celebrate their successes.
For example, expanding on something they’ve said, repeating words while playing to emphasise the use of language or talk about what they’re saying. You might say, “you’re brushing the doll’s hair” while playing with dolls.
Common “errors” in a child’s pronunciation of speech sounds are known as phonological processes. All children learn how to pronounce and distinguish sounds in different ways, and will often use certain phonological processes before learning how to say the target sounds correctly.
See some examples of phonological processes in the below table.
Common “errors” in a child’s pronunciation of speech sounds are known as phonological processes. All children learn to pronounce and distinguish sounds in different ways, and will often use certain phonological processes before learning how to say the target sounds correctly. See some examples of phonological processes in the below table.
[table id=2 /]When should I reach out to a speech pathologist?
Every child is different and develops at a different rate. While there are some milestones to be aware of, don’t panic if your child is not there yet! They could just be a late bloomer.
Some developmental milestones to be aware of include:
- At six to eleven months, babies typically babble and might try to repeat sounds.
- Babies who are twelve to seventeen months old often have a vocabulary of four to six words.
- By twenty-three months old, children typically have a vocabulary of around 50 words and are starting to combine words into two-word phrases, e.g. “more milk”.
- Two- to three-year-olds know pronouns (e.g. “you”, “me”), can use descriptive words (e.g. “sad”, “small”), and often can use three-word sentences.
- Children aged four to five have understandable speech but might struggle to pronounce complex words (e.g. “hippopotamus”), they can describe how to do things (e.g. building a sandcastle) and can understand and answer questions.
- A five-year-old typically can understand sequence language (e.g. what happened next, this came first), engage in conversation and can use sentences with eight or more words.
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