About speech and speech development

Speech is the ability to use your lips, tongue and other parts of your mouth to produce sounds.

For speech, children need to understand different sounds and the rules for putting those sounds together in their own language.

Most children learn the following sounds at the following ages:

• around 3 years – b, p, m, n, h, d, k, g, ng (as in ‘sing’), t, w, f, y
• around 4-5 years – sh, zh, ch, j, s and cluster sounds like tw, kw, gl, bl
• around 6 years – l, r, v and cluster sounds like pl, kl, kr, fl, tr, st, dr, br, fr, gr, sn, sk, sw, sp, str, spl
• around 7-8 years – th, z and cluster sounds sm, sl, thr, skw, spr, skr.

About speech disorders

Most children make some mistakes in their speech during the first few years of speech development. But by about 3 years, most children can be understood by their parents, siblings and peers.

A speech disorder is when children have difficulty saying the sounds in words and this makes their speech more difficult to understand than the speech of other children of the same age.

Speech disorders are different from language delay. Children with language delay have difficulty understanding or using spoken language.

Spotting speech disorders

If you’re concerned that your child might have a speech disorder, think about how often people who don’t know your child have trouble understanding what your child says.

When a child is 2½ years old, an unfamiliar person should understand about half of what the child is saying.

When a child is 4-5 years old, an unfamiliar person should understand the child about three-quarters of the time. The child will probably still say some sounds and words differently from adults.

When a child is 6-7 years old, an unfamiliar person should understand almost everything the child says. The child might make some errors in the ‘th’ sound in words like ‘this’ or ‘that’. They might also have trouble saying longer words like ‘hippopotamus’.

When to get help for speech disorders

If your child has a speech disorder, you’ll probably need help from a professional.

It’s best to consider seeking help if your child:

• uses only a few speech sounds at 2 years of age
• doesn’t pronounce words the way you’d expect for their age
• makes a lot of mistakes with their speech and you can’t understand them
• gets frustrated or upset when you don’t understand them, has to repeat sounds or stutters
• has hearing loss and many middle ear infections.

Where to get help for children’s speech

If you have any worries about your child’s speech development, it’s a good idea to talk with your GP, paediatrician or child and family health nurse or your child’s teacher.

These professionals might refer you to a speech pathologist, or you can visit a private speech pathologist yourself. You can find a local professional by going to Speech Pathology Australia – Find a speech pathologist.

You might be referred to an audiologist if there’s a possibility that your child’s speech problems are caused by hearing loss. You can also find a local professional yourself by going to Audiology Australia – Find an audiologist.

How to help with children’s speech development

Young children typically pronounce words differently from adults. There’s no need to correct them every time they say a word differently from the way you say it.

If you want to encourage your child to form words the right way, gentle reminders can help. For example, if your child says, ‘I saw the tat’, you could reply, ‘Where was the cat? What was the cat doing?’ This involves repeating the missing or different sound – ‘cat’ – with a slight emphasis.

If your child’s speech is very hard to understand, here are ideas for helping your child to communicate:

• Ask your child to show you what they’re talking about. For example, ask your child to point to the thing that they want.
• Ask questions to get more information about what your child is trying to say. For example, ‘Are you telling me about something that happened today? Did it happen at kinder?’ Then let your child tell you the rest of the story.
• Encourage your child to talk slowly. Let your child know you’re listening and that they can have as much time as they need to tell you.

What not to worry about with speech development

In the early years, children might be able to make the right sounds, but they might not always use these sounds correctly in words. While children are learning to talk, they simplify adult speech to make it easier to say.

This means you probably don’t need to worry if your young child:

• substitutes a few sounds in words (‘lellow’ instead of ‘yellow’)
• simplifies difficult sound combinations (‘side’ instead of ‘slide’)
• drops syllables (‘puter’ instead of ‘computer’).

If you can understand your child, it’s probably OK.

Causes of speech disorders

Many speech disorders have no known cause.

Some speech disorders happen when a child has a physical problem like a cleft palate, which makes it hard for the child to create the sounds of speech. Other speech disorders can happen because of deafness or hearing loss. And some severe speech disorders are caused by genetic conditions.

Also, some speech disorders happen alongside autism, ADHD and other conditions.