Speech Pathology Services — Speech Development
Speech development involves how children say their speech sounds. Children learn to say all of the speech sounds of their home language gradually over a number of years. English-speaking children tend to have learned all of their speech sounds well by the time they are 7 or 8 years of age.
Speech development issues may include:
- replacing one sound with another — saying ‘sun’ as ‘dun’, for example;
- leaving speech sounds out of words — saying ‘bus’ as ‘bu’ or ‘bat’ as ‘at’, for example;
- leaving syllables out of words — saying ‘dinosaur’ as ‘disaur’, for example;
- mixing up sounds in words — saying ‘toilet’ as ‘loitet’, for example;
- saying certain sounds, such as ‘s’, ‘z’, ‘sh’ & ‘ch’, in a slushy or distorted way.
You may wish to contact Solid Foundations if your child’s speech development is of concern to you.