Speech therapy provides treatment to children with communication challenges, both in how they speak and how they understand language. Speech therapy can also treat oral motor skills, how a child articulates sounds, how they process sounds (auditory processing) as well as social pragmatic skills.
Here are some signs, based on your child’s age, to help determine if your child needs speech therapy:
Under 18 months
- Only makes a few sounds
- Not using gestures like waving or pointing
- Not imitating play sounds and words
- Not using true words within jargon or babbling
- Not starting to name familiar objects
- Not using a variety of speech sounds (p,b,m,h,w)
- Does not have between 10-20 words and is not beginning to put words together
18-24 Months
- Grunts and points rather than communicate when they want something
- Not pointing to a few body parts when asked (e.g. tummy, nose)
- Not showing understanding simple questions (e.g where is the ball)
- Not understanding some early prepositions (in, on)
- Not using two-word combinations frequently
- Leaving ends off words like “si-dow” instead of “sit down”
2-3 Years Old
- Not putting two- and three- word combinations together
- Saying fewer than 50 words
- Mostly unintelligible speech
- Not trying to get adults attention (watch me)
- Not answering “where” questions
- Unable to match 3-4 colors, know big and little
3-4 Years Old
- Unable to compare things, with words like bigger or shorter
- Unable to retell a story from a book or video
- Not saying all of the syllables in a word
- Not using sounds in the beginning, middle and end of words (e.g. /cat/ becomes /at/, /chip/ becomes /chi/
Call today for a phone consultation to determine if your child needs an evaluation with a speech language pathologist (609) 200-1118