What Is Typical Speech Development
Speech
development varies greatly from age to age. This page will
answer questions about what sounds your child should be making and at
what age.
You can also print out a copy of our development chart for your
personal use.
TYPICAL DEVELOPMENT
No
matter
how young or old your child is, you should be able to understand
a certain amount of what they say all the time. We call this speech
intelligibility.
| AGE |
Intelligible
to a stranger
|
| 18 months |
25% |
| 2 yrs |
50 - 70% |
| 3 yrs |
80% |
| 4+ yrs |
90 - 100% |
Keep in mind that girls
typically develop speech sooner
than boys do.
Since the 1930s
Speech-Language Pathologists have researched what ages
children should
be able to say certain sounds.
Each study had slightly
different
results so Pena-Brooks &
Hegde (2000)
compared the results and made the following generalizations
about speech production:
| By Age: |
Children should
be able to say the following sounds: |
|
3 yrs
|
h |
w |
m |
n |
b |
p |
f |
|
| 4
yrs |
d
|
t |
k |
g |
y |
ng |
|
|
| 6 yrs
|
l
|
v |
sh |
ch |
j |
|
At this age a child may still have errors on the r
, s , z and th sounds,
but they should be developing.
|
|
| 8-9 yrs
|
A
child should be able to say ALL sounds correctly
including: |
| r |
s |
z |
th
(thin) |
TH (that) |
|
Adapted from:
ยน
Pena-Brooks,
Adriana, & Hegde, M.N. (2000).
Assessment and treatment of articulation and
phonological
disorders in children. Austin, TX, U.S.A.:
PRO-ED,
Inc.
It is true that children who make articulation errors will sometimes
"grow out of it"; however,
the
more errors they have,
the
less likely
they will be to grow out of them. Additionally, if a child's brother,
sister, or parent had speech errors when they were younger, the child
will be at greater risk to have errors in their speech.
If your child is within 2-3 months of an age requirement and is not
saying a sound OR not saying it correctly,
use
our free screener to determine if you
should consider taking them to get evaluated by a speech
pathologist.
There are
typical patterns
of speech errors that children often use during development.
If children continue to these patterns of speech past the appropriate
age, this is called a phonological process disorder.
See
our phonological processes chart to determine if your child
is following an age appropriate pattern or not.
If your child is not close to an age requirement, is not saying a sound OR not saying
a sound correctly and you're wondering how to help them, let us help by
using our free speech language screening
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