Learning To Speak - Ages And Stages Of Your Child's Speech Development

By now, your child has already started to speak although not fully coherently but his efforts are worth an applause! Learning to speak is a crucial part of a child’s development and the most intensive period of speech development happens in the first three years of life.

What you need to know
Even though children vary in their development of speech and language, there are certain stages that can be identified as a rough guide to normal development. Typically, these skills must be reached at certain ages before more complex skills can be learned. These stages help speech pathologists determine if a child may need extra help to learn to speak or use language.

Speech development stages
Children experience a huge development in speech sounds and triple the number of words they can say between 1 and 2 years of age. As a result, their speech becomes easier to understand. At 2 years, half of their speech should be understood, and at 3 years, most of their speech should be understood by family and friends.

By 2 years, children can say a range of speech sounds when talking (e.g. p, b, m, t, d, n, h, and w) etc. Many children have difficulty saying sounds correctly all the time. Some words are more difficult than others for children to say, so they may make some sound errors (e.g. “tat” for cat and “Pam” for pram).

Disclaimer : Content presented here is for information purposes only, please consult with your doctor for any health queries

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