Worried About Your Child's Speech?

Are you concerned about the development of your child's speech? Are you having issues with the clarity where they are speaking? Whether it's your child or a child that you're working with, you need to pay attention when it comes to speech issues. Speech and language issues in the early years can lead to difficulties with education, learning and other issues later on. For example, did you know that speech is directly related to hearing, and a child who's having hearing issues is likely to have speech issues?

Children with intellectual disabilities, autism, and ADHD often deal with issues in their speech and language development, and those with global delay will also see a speech.Impediment early in life. Understanding audiologist specialties and expertise can help you to choose the right professional to discuss these problems with. If you're watching other children develop quickly, but yours is lagging behind when it comes to speech and language development, here are some of the things that you can do to start helping them.

Get the hearing checked. 

We already mentioned that understanding audiologist specialties and expertise can help you to choose the right professional, but you do need to make sure that you run through the full battery of hearing tests. There are specialist hearing tests for children that can be run so that you can ensure that your child's hearing is where it should be. If it's not, it's from here that you can get the right referral to the right professional to see about unblocking any issues.

Get a referral to speech and language. 

If you think there could be a problem, self refer to a speech and language therapist as soon as you can. It's likely that there could be a wait list, and it's also very likely that they might tell you to see an audiologist first to rule out any hearing issues. Speech therapy can help your child to develop faster, but if they have any hearing issues, you may need to interact that speech therapy with sign language.

Take notes of what's going on. 

You don't have to be a speech therapist yourself, and you don't have to diagnose an issue. But if you notice that particular sounds or words are difficult for your child to say, then make a note of those. This will help you to pick up the right pattern of what sounds are more difficult and what sounds are OK. You may notice a change from the L to the R sound and vice versa.

Model repetition. 

A good way to ensure that your child's speech starts to come on is to repeat words back clearly when they say a word incorrectly. Have your child look towards you while you say it again, and then make sure that they are hearing you say the correct word. This lets them know that you understood them, but it also encourages them to keep trying with the right speech.

Play games to practise their listening skills. 

If you suspect any hearing issues that could be impacting their speech development, play games. These could be music games, or this could be stop and go instructional games, but it can also help them to listen to sounds and words and syllables. Your child may not be ready for some games depending on their age, so base your decision on that.