New Harbinger Publications: Imagine you’re talking to a first-time parent who’s just had a baby and wants to know what to expect when it comes to his or her child’s speech development. What’s the normal developmental timetable, and what are some red flags parents should look for?

Dorothy Dougherty: Before most children can say real words, they communicate with a wide range of sounds, gestures, and facial expressions. As your child grows, he or she will develop control over the physical parts that enable him or her to speak, and he or she will continuously expand and change the sounds that he or she can make. Beginning shortly after birth, babies learn to control their mouths and airflow by coughing, burping, and crying. Around two to four months of age, your baby should begin to coo, squeal, and gurgle. These sounds are regular and repetitive, and they sound as if your baby is making vowel sounds.

Around two to seven months, babies like to entertain themselves by producing new sounds and repeating them. At around six months of age, babies begin to make sounds with their mouths partially closed. These sounds are called consonants and the first consonants that most babies add to their cooing are /k/, /p/, /m/, and /b/. Soon after, when your baby is better at controlling his or her vocal apparatus to repeat sounds, he or she may begin to put vowels and consonant sounds together and repeat them over and over again. This is called babbling.

Around the ninth to twelfth month, your baby’s babbling will include many more sounds. When these sounds are strung together into phrases and sentences they are called jargoning. At around twelve months of age, most children can move their articulators in a meaningful way to say real-sounding words. Even though by eighteen months, most children can use meaningful speech, many cannot say all the sounds of their language correctly. By approximately thirty months of age, your child should be able to produce all the vowel sounds correctly. However, for many children the ability to say all consonant sounds develops more slowly.

Deciding whether to look for professional help depends a lot on the language performance of a child at a particular age. Parents should understand about 25 percent of what their eighteen-month-old or 60 to 75 percent of what their two-year-old child is saying.

Extended family members and caregivers should understand most of what a three-year-old child has to say. Kids at this age should correctly produce vowels and consonants like /p/, /b/, /m/, and /w/ in words and repeat themselves when not understood without becoming frustrated.

People with whom you do not associate regularly should be able to understand your four-year-old child when he speaks, and her or she should be able to correctly produce the /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ and /f/ sounds.

By five, a child’s speech should be able to be understood my most listeners in all situations. By age eight to nine, a child should be able to make all the sounds of the language correctly, including /r/, /s/, /z/, and consonantal blends like /pl/, /tr/, and /str/.

NHP: What is the normal rate of vocabulary acquisition that a parent should expect?

DD: There are many factors that can affect language learning, either slowing it down or enhancing it. Because of the huge variation in what is considered normal, children who are not quite “on schedule” are not necessarily delayed; instead they may be following their individual internal timetables. A young child’s understanding and expression of words show grow and develop on a continuous basis. An indication for immediate concern would include any loss of language or social skills at any age.

If your child is one year of age, he should show an awareness of the world around him. He may communicate his likes and dislikes with crying, gestures, or may have even started using real words. He should babble and use sounds often spontaneously and in response to others in his environment.

Generally, by eighteen months of age, your child should use ten to twenty words, including names and should be able to use at least ten meaningful words or word approximations. By age two, your child should have a speaking vocabulary of fifty or more clear words or approximations and be learning how to join two words together. He should be able to ask simple questions and respond to simple questions with yes and no.

Between age two and three years, your child should be able to answer basic questions using at least three-to-five word sentences. Generally, children this age have a vocabulary of at least 450 words.

Between ages four and five years, your child should speak in sentences of four to five words and have a vocabulary of nearly 1,500 words. He or she should now ask many questions, too.

Between ages five and six years, your child should use sentences that are five to six words long and have a vocabulary of around 2,000 words. Most children this age are now able to define objects by their use (use “eat“ with a “spoon”) and understand and express spatial relationship words, such as “on top”, “behind”, “far”” and “near”. Also, your child may use many different types of sentences and ask questions to gain information. Most five- and six-year-old children can use words to have a reasonable, intelligible conversation with family and peers that they are familiar with.

NHP: Can you give us an overview of the different types of speech disorders?

DD: Speech is the actual physical production of sounds. If your child’ speech sounds are different from his peers who are the same age, gender, or ethnic group, or if he frequently avoids talking because he is hard to understand, he may have a speech-sound disorder. Children with a speech sound disorder may be having difficulty in one or more of the following areas:

A child with an articulation disorder does not pronounce words clearly and precisely because he or she uses the wrong sounds when speaking omits sound in words. For example, he or she might pronounce “cookie” as “tottie.”

A child with a phonological processes disorder has not mastered the sound pattern of a language. For example, he or she may omit the first sound in a word, pronouncing “mice” as “ice.”

Fluency problems show up as interruptions or disfluencies in the normal flow of speech. For example, a child may repeat a sound when talking, such as, “T-T-T-Tom”

If a child has a voice problem, he or she will have difficulty with the way his or her speech sounds. His or her voice may be too loud, too soft, or too hoarse. The quality of a child’s voice may interfere with normal everyday activities or make the child’s speech difficult to understand.

NHP: What are phonological processes and how long does the average child use them?

DD: When most children have acquired a speaking vocabulary of about twenty-five words, they being to use the phonological system of their language. Of course, young children don’t learn all the phonemes, or the complicated rules governing their use, instead, most use phonological processes. This is a strategy used by children between one and one-half years to four years of age to simplify their production of speech sounds. Some phonological processes, such as: substituting easy, early developing sounds for those that are acquired later.

For example, /p/, /t/, /b/, /d/, /k/ and /g/ sounds in a word may replace /f/, /v/, /s/, and /z/ sounds in words) or consonants usually produced in the back of the mouth, such as /k/ and /g/ are replaced by sounds pronounced in the front of the mouth. In this case, the /k/ sound is pronounced /t/, so “come” is pronounced “tome”; /g/ is pronounced /d/, so “gum” becomes “dum.” These substitutions are typical and disappear by age three or four. However, sometimes these and other errors persist and a child’s oversimplification of sounds can make his or her speech very hard to understand.

NHP: You talk about environmental factors that can help or hinder a child’s ability to develop normal speech. What are some of these?

DD: The amount and kind of speech and language stimulation and the presence of certain environmental conditions in your child’s home will play an important role in his or her development of articulation skills. A home environment that provides lots of stimulation and interaction between parent and child not only enhances a young child’s speech and language skills, it also makes the time you spend together more fun and rewarding. If a child doesn’t receive a lot of verbal stimulation, or people in his or her environment don’t acknowledge or respond when he or she talks, in later situations, he or she may choose not to speak. Children learn to say speech sounds correctly by listening to others talking directly to them and by practicing talking themselves. They must enjoy hearing speech and responding with words, and they should be reacted to constructively by others in their environment when they speak.

NHP: What are some of the physical factors that can interfere with speech development?

DD: When the cause of an articulation problem is organic, it is the result of a structural or brain problem. Some organic problems that often cause a child to have articulation problems include cleft palate, hearing impairment, apraxia, and problems with the muscles of the mouth used to make speech sounds.

NHP: What is “receptive language” and why is it so important?

DD: The ability to understand what we hear and see is called receptive language skills. Children build their understanding of words by listening to people talking around them ad by talking to them. Before children can say words themselves, they must develop receptive language skills, that is, connect meaning to objects and actions. The normal age span at which most children begin to understand words spoken to them is around six to nine months. Words are not learned in isolation but as part of the flow of phrases and sentences. Children understand new words by building on the words they already know.

NHP: What does the research tell us about how speech development affects academic performance and social adjustment?

DD: Research has shown that a child’s development of language is crucial to their ability to learn and think and has a significant impact on their overall educational experience. Speech and language disorders can affect the way a child talks, understands, and analyzes and process information. In addition, a child’s spoken language skills will provide the foundation for the development of reading and writing. Research has shown that children with communication disorders often struggle with reading and writing and perform at a poor or insufficient academic level. Also, our communications skills are the heart of life’s experience. Children who are having a difficulty time learning to communicate often feel isolated from their peers and, in turn, may suffer from poor self –esteem

NHP: You say that infancy is the time to begin to read aloud to your child. Why is that, and what type of books are the most conducive to successful speech development?

DD: It is important for every child, especially those who may be having a hard time learning to talk, to develop an early enjoyment of spoken and written language. It is never too early to begin to read aloud to your child. Even though at first your child will not understand the meaning of your words, researchers have found that babies are learning and remembering the rhythm and inflections of how the language spoken around him is organized.

Reading aloud is a great way to spend quality time with your child and develop an important foundation for the development of his or her speech and language skills. Story time, at any age, provides many opportunities for emphasizing sounds, intonation patterns, and word meanings. When you read a book or recite a rhyme to a young child at any age, you enhance his or her visual and listening ability and increase his or her vocabulary. When you are reading aloud, your child is listening to you model how to produce sounds in words, phrases, and sentences. In Teach Me How to Say it Right, you will find the type of book recommended for a child’s specific age and also books that emphasize a sound that your young child may be having trouble saying.

NHP: You suggest that parents use everyday activities like going to the grocery store or running errands as an opportunity to facilitate their children’s speech development. Can you give us some examples of how a parent would do this?

DD: Recent scientific research tells us that a parent’s interests and interactions with their children from the moment of birth is essential as they “shape” their babies brain and set the groundwork for future learning.

Before a baby says his or her first word, he or she must hear that word many times and understand its meaning. The natural way for your baby to learn the meanings of words and how to say them correctly is to listen to you talk in relation to the events going on around you. In this manner, he or she will learn to associate the words you say with the actions, objects, or thoughts you describe. Just because your baby is not talking yet, it doesn’t mean he or she is not listening and learning.

Talking can and should be a part of everything you and your child do together. Talk to your child about what you are seeing, doing, feeling, and touching as you cook dinner, vacuum the carpet, or sort and fold laundry. Describe your actions as you make the bed, set the table, or simply pour your child a drink. If possible, let your child accompany you to the supermarket, post office or on other errands around town. For safety reasons, you must keep your eye on your child every second, so why not engage his attention with the sound of your voice. To a young child, the whole world is new. Even the most routine activities can be an exciting and learning experience for him or her

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