I have been a little concerned that my son has a bit of a speech delay. Age for age, my daughter was so much more articulate, although I think he would surpass her in every area except speech and fine motor…so stereotypical! For some peace of mind I took him for an assessment through the early intervention office through the city. Much of the test was identifying and pronouncing pictures of random items. He missed one item on the whole test (leaf instead of feather) thanks to little reader and early learning! They handed him a crayon and asked him to “draw something”…he wrote his name lol something I had never seen him do, nor did I teach him!
Anyway, he has some “errors” in his speech but they are “developmentally appropriate” by the charts. He is quite ahead overall, including in speech (although I did not disclose that he was reading already), which I was relieved to hear. The best part is that they recorded which sounds he could say and which sounds he could not. I am so glad I took him in, now I know what sounds to give him more exposure to, I would have never known where to look for this information. Others may find helpful so I am sharing it here. I learned there are actually several assessment models used to gauge speech progress, such as the Iowa-Nebraska Articulation Norms and the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation.
Her blog also offers some really cute PDF worksheets to isolate any individual sounds your child needs to focus on. This is especially helpful!http://mommyspeechtherapy.com/?page_id=55
It is amazing how again and again to see how much more developed girls speech is than boys. Of course there are exceptions. But in all my years working with and knowing kids I have met incredibly articulate boys, and Limited verbal girls a handful of times.
Oh, TmT!
I cannot thank you enough for posting these charts! As a first time mom I have been worried about the fact that Alex cannot properly pronounce specific Digraphs! She has such an extensive vocabulary, and reading ability… and when we are in public people always insist she is incredibly vocal and advanced! Yet I have always worried because I hear her improper enunciation! This chart says it all, especially for a first-time mom that knows her understanding/reading comprehension/ pronunciation ability FAR surpasses her speaking ability!
It DEFINITELY helps as a frame of reference! I have recently been around several children, minimum of a year older than Alex, that ai could not understand if my life depended upon it! The thought, (although I am constantly told that Alex is EXCEPTIONALLY clear, always made left m concerned that only I, her mother, could understand her perfectly!
I cannot stress enough how nice it is to realize that my expectations are FAR removed from traditional guidelines and expectations!
And horribly mixed emotions knowing that the possibilities are SO INCREDIBLY far from the reality:((((
Thanks for the links - it is interesting to see that the chart only starts at 2 years of age. My 2nd DD is much slower with her speech than my first DD and it has worried me at times though she is saying more and more and is on track with the milestones. I am finding what helps me understand her better is to keep her reading and reading words that she already says initially and then later words that she knows but I am not sure if she has ever said as then I can hear how she pronounces them and make better guesses later. I have also been teaching her the phonetic alphabet extensively and reading loads of alphabet books so that I can hear which sounds are easy for her and which she is not yet saying - she knows more of them than she can say at the moment. It does not help that she and her sister have very hard to pronounce first names - she tries very hard to say both names but there is no way anyone else would know what she is saying - even my eldest took quite a long while to be able to say her own name correctly.
This is so, so true. It helped me learn how he was pronouncing words. I tried signing with him which I know would have helped (my daughter took to it so easily) but he flat out refused. Even in the early days, my son could read more out loud from a book in a single sitting than he ever spontaneously said at any given time. It amazed me he could read aloud more than he was able to, or chose to, speak. And the words he did say were typically the ones he had previously encountered in flashcards or books. We have been increasing the frequency and length of our bedtime reading sessions over the last few months and it’s making a huge difference in his stamina and encouraging improvements in his pronunciation overall. We took a break for a while and now he is initiating bedtime reading every night, probably just because he’s figured out it’s a great stall tactic that allows him to stay up a few more minutes. lol
Tonya that is is how James was/is. He actually was doing speech therapy from 1.5-2.5. He could sign which helped us a lot. But he had no sounds or speech. One day he just started reading aloud. And for a long time the only speech he had was when he was reading.
Right now his speech is doing well. He isn’t where he should be developmentally. But he is close. His grammar is appalling, and his articulation is so so. But we can understand a lot of what he says because he reads clearly, well to me anyways.
Thanks for posting these! I was considering recommending a speech therapist to one of my kindy kids. I havnt done it yet because I figured I could do as good a job as them, considering I have him 4 days a week and they do only one lesson a week…anyway after looking through these links we are doing just fine. I shall continue with my focus words and he will be ahead for his age in no time. It’s interesting that here in Australia a couple of those sounds are expected from kids at an walker age. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing or perhaps it’s just that the teachers insist on it for phonics lessons?
I had flagged a just turned 4 year old boy for the sounds “th” and " sp" and ending sounds “-L” but passed a bilingual Cantonese kid who coulnt say “rrrrr” pretty sure there is no rrrrr sound in Cantonese. I also passed another boy who was recommended for speach therapy assessment because I could clearly understand him and even though he didnt use the sounds in his conversations he was quite capable of saying them all when asked. I decided he was just shy and lazy rather than in need of assistance.
I shall commit the boys chart to memory and use it as a base line. I did notice the girls chart doesn’t list the TH sound separately…odd.
Anyway thanks you saved me some work digging through the WWW. :biggrin:
Manda there are more than a few different charts that are used to tell when speech sounds come in. And they are all quite different. I used to have a copy of them all at be point when my son was doing speech therapy. When I get a bit of time I will see if I can find them again.