Ever wonder about your child's speech development?

This is a guest post from a wonderful friend who was my inspiration to begin my blog!  She also happens to be a fabulous speech teacher.  I asked Lisa to share some insight into what new moms can watch for as their children's language continues to develop.  I hope you enjoy this wonderfully informative post as much as I did!

Hey Y’all! I’m Lisa from Diary of a Newlywed and I am excited to be writing my first guest post for Katie. 

I work with Katie at the school house and we have become great friends.  Katie is a phenomenal teacher and the students and staff respect her in so many ways.

I am a Speech Language Pathologist in the middle school setting. You can call me an SLP or speech therapist.  I have experience in private therapy, inpatient/  outpatient rehab facilities, preschool aged children, elementary aged children and traumatic brain injured patients. I know I am crazy but I love the hospital environment. It feels like I am really helping someone out. I also love early development in children. If you ask my husband, he says whatever I am practicing at the moment is my favorite. That is why I chose this profession. There is so much to do within this field and that alleviates the chances of boredom.

Katie asked me to write about child development in regards to speech acquisition.  This is something I discuss a lot. When I am at a play date my oldest sister and my nephews, I laugh at how many mothers ask me to listen to their little Johnny’s speech and see if he is on target for his age. Unfortunately, many people (not all but a vast majority-including some of my co-workers) believe an SLP only works with articulation, lisps, and stutters. While we do work with those children/patients often, we also work with language development which targets pragmatics (social language), semantics (vocabulary), and syntax (word and sentence formations).  I could keep going but let’s face it, you want the quick and dirty.

Lists of age of acquisition for sounds in speech and common phonological processes are listed below: 

Sanders ( 1972) Norms for Speech Sound Mastery

(Concerns arise when the child passes the age of acquisition and cannot produce the sound

or has numerous errors making speech less than 50% understandable in conversation)

Age 3:  p, m, w, n, h

Age 4:  b, d, k, g, y (as in yes), f

Age 6:  t, l, r, ng

Age 7:  j (as in jump), ch, sh, th (unvoiced as in think)

Age 8:  er (as in feather, perfect)

              v, th (voiced as in the) s, z

            (zh is mastered later than 8)

Common Phonological Processes (Should not persist beyond age 5):

Final consonant deletion:                                             says “ba”  instead of “ball”

Syllable reduction:                                                           says “nana” instead of “banana”

Vowelization:                                                                    says “ca” instead of “car”,  “penso” instead of “pencil”

Gliding:                                                                           says “wed” instead of “red”, says “syide” instead of “slide”

Cluster Reduction:                                                           says “boom” instead of “broom”

Doubling:                                                                                             says “ho-ho” for “horse”, says “wa-wa” instead of “water”

Initial Consonant Deletion                                            says “all” instead of “ball”

Backing (not a common process):                             says “gog” instead of “dog”

Fronting:                                                                                              says “tat” instead of “cat”

Glottal Replacement:                                                     say “ba-tub” for “bathtub”

Another important rule is that of the Mean Length Utterance(MLU) of a language developing child.  It relates to the age of the child. If the child is one, they should be using one word to request something. When the child is two, they should be putting two words together to form an utterance. It may not be intelligible to all listeners but the words should be ones that are consistently used by the child that the parent can identify. A three year old should be using 3 word utterances. A four year old should be using four words and a five year old should be using five words in an utterance. As the age increases so should the complexity and length of utterances.   

I think that sums it up nicely for you as a quick little blurb! Please do not live by this because depending on the age of your child, location for therapy, IQ,  etc…other circumstances may apply when assessing, diagnosing, and /or treating a child. I hope to see you all soon over at my blog and I will of course come visit yours as well!