It’s a question speech therapists hear from parents all the time. You understand your child most of the time, but grandparents, educators or other kids find their speech harder to follow. If this sounds familiar, here’s what the team at SPOT Paediatrics wants you to know.
Speech sounds develop gradually
Children learn to produce different sounds and sound combinations over several years. Some speech differences are completely expected while they’re still developing.
You might notice sounds being changed or left out. For example, a child might say “seep” for “sheep”, “fog” for “frog”, or drop sounds from longer words. A few of these patterns can be part of typical development, but having several patterns happening at once can make a child much harder to understand.
What’s typical at each age?
How well unfamiliar people understand your child can be useful information. As a general guide, we’d expect an unfamiliar adult to understand around 75% of what a three-year-old says, and at least 90% of what a four-year-old says.
Parents often understand much more because they know their child, their routines and their favourite topics so well. That’s completely normal.
It’s not about effort
Children aren’t making speech errors because they aren’t trying. A child might be able to say a sound clearly in one word but find it much harder in a longer word or sentence. Speech becomes more complex as children put sounds together quickly during conversation.
Communication is more than speech
Children may also communicate through gestures, facial expressions, movement, signs, sounds or AAC (augmentative and alternative communication). It’s important to recognise all the ways your child communicates and support their preferences, especially when they are minimally or non-speaking.
If your child becomes frustrated or stops trying when they aren’t understood, this can tell us that communicating has become difficult in that moment. They may need some other tools to help them communicate more successfully.
What does a speech pathology assessment look at?
A speech pathology assessment considers the whole picture. The therapist will look at which sounds your child can make, the patterns in their speech, their age, how understandable they are, and how they communicate when someone doesn’t understand them, and what their preferences are for the way they like to communicate.
You don’t need to wait
You don’t need to be certain there’s a problem before seeking advice. If you’re wondering whether your child’s speech is developing as expected, reaching out can simply give you more information and practical strategies to try at home.
And if your child’s communication is developing differently, the goal isn’t to make every child communicate in exactly the same way as others. It’s to reduce barriers, help them get their message across, and support communication in a way that works for them.
Information provided by Eilis from SPOT Paediatrics.
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