In summary, call Eastside Speech Solutions and ask for your child to be
assessed if:

• You are worried about your child’s language comprehension, expression and/or understanding
• You think your child’s understanding is different from other children of the same age
• Your child stutters (no matter what their age)
• Your child’s voice sounds different from other children’s e.g it sounds hoarse
• Your child’s teacher expresses concern.

By the age of one, your baby should be able to:

• Say dad, mumma and a few other words
• Try to make familiar sounds, such as car and animal noises
• Respond to familiar sounds such as the telephone ringing, vacuum cleaner or a car in the driveway
• Understand simple commands such as “no!”
• Recognise their own name
• Understand the names of familiar objects and people
• Enjoy songs, music and books.

By the age of two most children start to talk to themselves and you can seen their language and communication skills starting to develop:

• Listen to stories and say the names of the pictures
• Understand simple sentences, such as “where’s your shoe?”
• Say the names of simple body parts such as nose or tummy
• Use more than 50 words such as “no”, “gone”, “mine” and “teddy”
• Talk to themselves or their toys in play
• Sing simple songs such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little star” or “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”
• Try simple sentences such as “Milk all gone”
• Use some simple pronouns such as “he”, “if”
• Should be able to say m, n and h correctly.

By the age of three, your child’s communication should be understood by family, close friends and regular carers and they should be able to:

• Understand how objects are used e.g. a crayon is something you draw with
• Recognise their own needs such as hunger
• Follow directions
• Understand basic concepts (in/under, hot/cold)
• Use 3-4 word sentences
• Understand basic grammar
• Enjoy telling stories and asking questions
• Should be able to say p, b, m, n, ng, w, y, t, d, k, g and f

By the age of four, your child should be able to be understood most of the time by most people. If you find friends and acquaintances can not understand your child’s express then perhaps a visit to a therapist may be warranted. Your child should be able to:

• Understand shape and colour names
• Understand “wh” questions such as “where are they going?” or “why did he fall?”
• Understand “time” words such as lunchtime, today, winter
• Use lots of words (900+) and understand complex sentences
• Use 4-5 word sentences
• Use correct grammar most of the time
• Use language when playing with other children
• Should be able to say s, z, sh, ch and j

This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you are concerned about any aspect of your baby or toddler’s speech or language please give us a call.

Click here for milestones for school age children.

Stuttering is never a normal part of a child’s (or adult’s) speech and is not caused by anxiety, stress or poor parenting. Whilst many children do stop stuttering, about 20% continue to stutter into adulthood if left untreated. The latest research indicates that the time to seek help is as soon as you notice your child is stuttering

A tongue thrust is a condition where the tongue rests incorrectly (e.g. between the teeth) or moves forward during a swallow. The result is that the tongue pushes against or protrudes between the upper and lower teeth.

Some common indicators of a tongue thrust include:

• an open bite
• poor teeth alignment
• poor muscle tone in the lips and cheeks
• an open mouth resting posture during the day and/or at night
• a tongue that you can see resting between the teet
• difficulties saying “s, z, t or d” sounds
• excessive lip licking or drooling
• snoring.

PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. It is a therapy developed in the 1980’s by Deborah Hayden, founder of the PROMPT® Institute. It is a holistic approach that assesses not just a client’s speech movement patterns but how their speech production interacts with their language and cognitive abilities as well as their social and emotional skills. Therapy goals are set taking into account the whole person and their needs.

The PROMPT institute has a very helpful website http://www.promptinstitute.com with information about PROMPT. At Eastside Speech we regularly run parent-training workshops for parents of children in our clinic. These workshops provide a comprehensive overview of the PROMPT apporach and help parents and caregivers to be involved in therapy planning and goal setting. They are generally run over 3 evenings.