CHILD RESOURCES

What causes speech and language delays and/or disorders?
Various factors may delay or impair the development process, such as speaking more than one language, limited exposure to language, hearing loss (often from hearing infections), anatomical anomalies, family history, abnormal pregnancy, or frequent illness or physical disability. 
For more information on identifying the signs, click here
Your child may be experiencing difficulty with speech, language or both.

SPEECH CONSISTS OF 
1) Articulation meaning how one uses his/her lips, tongue, mouth, known as articulators, to produce and pronounce sounds
2) Voice, which is how we breathe and use our vocal chords to produce sound in a loud, soft or high/low pitch
3) Fluency, which is the flow of our speech. Is it slow, fast or do we have pauses or repetitions of word, AKA, stuttering.

SPEECH SOUND DEVELOPMENT 
Vocal play: (4-6 months)
Child is becoming familiar with his/her articulators (tongue and lips) and realizing he/she can make sounds.  This is when a child coos.
Canonical or reduplicative babbling: (6-10 months)
Child repeats vowel/consonant sounds, such as ba-ba-ba, da-da-da.  This can also encompass grunting sounds.
Jargon: (8-18 months)
​Child produces protowords (approximations of words).  Child sounds like he/she is conveying a message, because of the intonation and context in which he/she is speaking.

LANGUAGE includes how we understand and express ourselves to communicate our needs, wants and opinions.  A child must first understand language, which is known as receptive language, before expressive language is developed.

RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE
A child must understand language in order to imitate or respond. Therefore, receptive language occurs before expressive language. You may have thought to yourself, “my child understands, but why isn’t he saying anything?”
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EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE
Expressive language is the ability to communicate needs, wants, feelings, thoughts and ideas.  When developing this may be a gesture, coo, or babble.
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For more information on language development, click on the links below.
Birth – 5 years old language development
Kindergarten- Fifth grade language