[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.27.8″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.8″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.8″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ theme_builder_area=”post_content” _builder_version=”4.27.8″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”1px||0px|||”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.8″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.27.8″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″ theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.8″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n
A grandmother says she cannot understand a word. A teacher asks the child to repeat themselves three times. Somewhere inside that worry sit two different questions, and they have different answers: which sounds a child should have by now, and how much of their speech a stranger should be able to follow.<\/p>\n
Jump to:<\/strong><\/p>\n A review of fifteen studies covering 18,907 children speaking English in the United States produced the clearest picture available of when each consonant turns up. Grouped by the age at which most children have it:<\/p>\n p, b, d, m, n, h, w<\/p>\n<\/div>\n t, k, g, ng, f, y<\/p>\n<\/div>\n v, s, z, sh, ch, j, l<\/p>\n<\/div>\n r, zh, and the voiced th<\/em> in this<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The voiceless th<\/em> in thumb<\/em> comes last of all, around six. Grouped a different way: the plosives, nasals and glides are finished before four, the affricates around five, the liquids around six, and the fricatives last.<\/p>\n Which means that a four-year-old saying wabbit<\/em> is on schedule, not behind. A five-year-old saying fumb<\/em> for thumb<\/em> is on schedule. Two of the sounds adults correct most often are the two that arrive last, and correcting them early achieves nothing except making a child self-conscious about their own mouth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is the more useful measure, because it is the one that affects a child’s life. Sounds are a detail. Being understood is the point.<\/p>\n Research tracking intelligibility from thirty months onwards found that the average three-year-old was understood about half the time by listeners who did not know them, for single words and for sentences alike. At thirty months the spread between children was enormous, running from under a fifth of speech understood at the low end to roughly three quarters at the high end. Full intelligibility arrives considerably later than the old rule of thumb suggests, and the climb continues well into the school years.<\/p>\n Two things follow from that. The first is that a three-year-old who is hard work to follow is extremely common and usually not a problem. The second is that by four or five, a typically developing child is generally intelligible even to strangers, so a five-year-old whom the neighbours cannot follow is a different situation and worth measuring rather than waiting out.<\/p>\n A useful home test: think of the people who are not in your house. Can a grandparent who visits monthly follow your child? The shop assistant? A new teacher? Parents are the worst judges of their own child’s intelligibility, because they have years of practice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Miami this changes the picture for most families. Spanish and English do not share a sound system: English has sounds Spanish does not use at all, and Spanish has the trilled rr<\/em>, which is one of its latest-arriving sounds. A child building both is working through two schedules, and the overlap between them is imperfect.<\/p>\n An accent carried from one language into the other is a difference, not a disorder, and it is not something therapy sets out to remove. What matters is whether the child is behind in both<\/em> languages. A child on track in Spanish and finding English hard is doing what bilingual children do. A child behind in both is the one to look at. That distinction, and why dropping a home language is the wrong response, is covered in bilingualism and speech delay<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Speech-language pathologists pay less attention to individual sounds than parents expect, and more to the shape of the errors.<\/p>\n Worth asking about if: your child had words and has lost them; people outside the family cannot follow them at three; your child is frustrated, gives up, or has stopped trying to talk to strangers; speech became suddenly harder to understand; there is a history of repeated ear infections or glue ear; or you have ever wondered about their hearing. Hearing is checked first, always, because it is the cheapest thing to rule out and the most consequential to miss.<\/p>\n There is one further reason not to leave it. Children with a preschool history of speech sound difficulties are around two and a half times more likely to meet criteria for a reading disorder later. That is a raised risk rather than a forecast, and it is the main argument for measuring rather than waiting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A speech evaluation is a measurement. Sounds are sampled in single words and in connected speech, intelligibility is judged by someone who does not know your child, the mouth and its movements are looked at, and comprehension is tested alongside production, because speech difficulties and language difficulties travel together more often than not. What the appointment involves is set out in what a speech evaluation looks like<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most of these evaluations end with a range of normal and a date to review. That is a good outcome, and it is worth the appointment to get it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Not by asking them to say it again. Say the word back correctly inside your own sentence. They said wed twuck<\/em>, you say yes, a red truck<\/em>, and move on. They hear the model without being put on the spot.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n Occasionally, but it is blamed far more often than it is responsible. Most children with restricted tongues speak perfectly clearly. If someone proposes a procedure for speech reasons, a speech evaluation first is reasonable.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n Many children do, particularly with the later sounds. The trouble is that this is only knowable afterwards, which is why the age matters more than the sound: an unclear three-year-old and an unclear six-year-old are different situations.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n Familiar listeners fill in gaps automatically, and so do familiar routines and objects. Away from both, the same speech carries much less. It is the classroom version that tells you where your child actually is.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n Prolonged use can affect how teeth sit and how some sounds are made, but it is rarely the whole explanation. It is worth addressing on its own terms rather than as a cure for unclear speech.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n Tell us who struggles to understand them and at what age, and we will tell you whether it needs measuring.<\/p>\n Contact us<\/a> Speech therapy<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Which sounds arrive at which age, how much of a child’s speech a stranger should follow, what two languages change, and when to ask.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[22,20,21],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-understanding-development","tag-developmental-milestones","tag-speech-delay","tag-speech-therapy","sfg-tx-speech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866,"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions\/866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skillsforgrowth.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Which sounds arrive when<\/h2>\n
How much a stranger should understand<\/h2>\n
Two languages<\/h2>\n
Patterns that matter more than single sounds<\/h2>\n
\n
When to ask<\/h2>\n
Questions parents ask<\/h2>\n
Should I correct my child when a sound is wrong?<\/summary>\n
Could it be a tongue tie?<\/summary>\n
Will they grow out of it?<\/summary>\n
My child is clear at home and unclear at school. Why?<\/summary>\n
Does a dummy or thumb-sucking cause this?<\/summary>\n
Does your child get asked to repeat themselves?<\/h2>\n