This refers to a difficulty or inability to produce speech sounds, resulting in speech that is difficult to understand. There are different categories of speech sound delays and different therapy approaches catered to each type. It is therefore important to have any concerns assessed as early as possible so that the therapy best-suited to your child can be implemented according to your child's specific needs.
Speech Pathologists at Startright Speech Therapy are PROMPT (PROMPTs for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets) trained by the PROMPT Institute. This allows for further specialised assistance to be provided for those children who find it more difficult to produce the speech sounds and who are not responding to traditional therapy. This specialist training allows each individual child's speech sound programme to be carried out in a manner that caters for their individual needs and rate of learning.
A Speech Pathology assessment is recommended if you are concerned about any of the following:
♦ If you or other people have difficulty understanding what your child is saying
♦ Some speech sounds are left out when the child is talking
♦ If the child has difficulty saying some of the sounds that are expected for their age. Children should be able to produce the following sounds when speaking by the corresponding ages listed below:
2 – 3.5 years – h, k, p, y, g, t, y, b, d, m, w, n
3.5 – 4.5 years – f, l, sh, ch, j, s, z
5 years – v, r
6.5 years – th
By age 4.5 years, children should be blending two or more consonants together within words, for example 'sky', 'cloud' and 'splash'.
