As speech and language pathologists it is our job to evaluate your child to determine the need for therapy. But how do you know when your child should be evaluated?
Dr. Ann Kummer , speech and language pathologist and child psychologist, Dr. Leslie Rescorla conducted a study to assess children who were considered “late talkers”. Late talkers were children between the ages of 24-31 months. These children were followed until 17 years of age. Results revealed that most children “caught up” by the age of 5 years. However, in comparing these children to a comparison group, the majority of late talkers continued to have significant weakness in language skills.
It is recommended that parents monitor their child’s language skills from birth. Your infant should be vocalizing at 2 months, babbling (e.g. baba, dada) at 8-9 months, jargoning at 9-12 months and producing several first words between 1 year and 15 months. At 2 years of age, your child should be combining 2-3 words to produce short utterances. As speech and language pathologists, it is our role to evaluate your child’s speech and language skills when the expected skills are either not developing, developing slowly or appear atypical in development.
If your child is in treatment, research shows that families who participate in treatment and are able to practice what their child is learning, show the greatest success. It’s never too late for intervention. However, we do know that the earlier we provide intervention the easier it is for the child to learn language.
If you have questions about your child’s speech and language development, please feel free to email us at office@weespeech.com.