A common reason children come to speech therapy is articulation, or how they say speech sounds. Speech sounds are the individual sounds that make up speech. In the word ‘cat’, there are 3 sounds: /c/ /a/ /t/. Being able to hear and understand the difference between sounds, coordinate the muscles in and around the mouth, and transition quickly and accurately between sounds can be challenging for some children.
Maybe your child is saying ‘fin’ instead of ‘thin’, or ‘butterfly’ becomes ‘buttfly’. When does a cute speech quirk become a speech delay? Research suggests children should be easily understood 50% of the time at 4 years, 75% by 5 years, and 90% a little past 7 years. That means if you’re standing there scratching your head half of the time when your 4-year-old opens their mouth, it might not be time to panic yet.
As well as how easy they are to understand, there are guidelines for which sounds children should have by each age. Caroline Bowen (2011) suggests children should have the following sounds developed:
- 3 years old: h, y, w, ng, m, n, p, k, t, b, g, d
- 3 years 6 months: f
- 4 years: l, sh, ch
- 4 years 6 months: s, z, j
- 5 years: r
- 6 years: v
- 8 years: th
There are other factors that influence whether a child should receive therapy earlier than the above ages, such as the types of errors they make. If you are concerned about your child’s articulation skills, an assessment with a speech pathologist can tell you whether speech therapy is needed, and give you strategies to encourage speech sound development.
References
Bowen, C. (2011). Table 4: Phonetic Development. Retrieved from speech-language-therapy.com on 15 February 2022.
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