Articulation and Phonology

Using toys to encourage language development

Speech sounds disorders can affect a child’s ability to communicate, decrease their self-confidence, and are correlated with later language and reading disabilities. Research shows that most sounds should be correctly produced by age 5.  We have specialized training in treatment approaches such as cycles, articulation therapy, and Easy Does it for preschool stuttering.

We expect a child to be understood by:

18 months: 25% intelligible

24 months: 50-75% intelligible

36 months: 75% intelligible

By age 4, children should be 100% intelligible

A speech delay simply means that there is a slower rate of development than expected. Here are some characteristics of  children that present with a speech delay:

  1. They have difficulty acquiring a variety of consonant sounds as quickly as expected
  2. They don’t sounds like children their age
  3. They struggle to be understood
 

Articulation Disorders

Articulation refers the way the muscles of the mouth accurately produce sounds.  Some articulation errors are age appropriate. For examples, a child isn’t expected to correctly produce the “th” sound until seven, but some are no longer expected for your child’s age and can take away from their message
d to them feeling frustrated.

 

Phonological Disorders

Most little ones use typical speech patterns such as leaving final sounds off. The key is there are norms around when we longer expect to see specific patterns. For example, while it’s typical to relace the “k” sound with a “t” sound, we no longer expect that pattern to persist past 3 years old.

During your child’s in-depth speech sound evaluation, your therapist will determine which sounds are expected and which would benefit from speech therapy, and consider impact on overall speech clarity, evidence-based treatment techniques, and what’s motivating and important to our clients

 

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Brooke's heart is in her work, and you can tell she loves what she does

Brooke has been working with my son Colton for about a year now. She is an amazing speech path and has created a great relationship with him during that time. He is always super excited to see her, and sees the time he spends with her as play time. Yet he’s always learning. Colton has an obsession with trains, and so generally wants to show her how his trains are set up every week. Brooke manages to incorporate whatever skill they are working on into this play. Whether it was putting more than one word together, or focusing on certain sounds, or not dropping the endings of words. She also leaves us with suggestions on what to do with him over the next week to help with the goal that we are currently working on.

Brooke’s heart is in her work, and you can tell she loves what she does. If you choose to work with her, you will be happy with the results you see. Colton had had an explosion of vocabulary this year, and I know she contributed greatly to that.

Autumn M

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