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Because children do not come with manuals (unfortunately), it can be challenging for parents to know what is in the range of normal development for all kinds of milestones: eating solid food, sleeping through the night, crawling, walking, toilet training… the list goes on.  It doesn’t help that every child seems to develop at his or her own pace.  Even children in the same family can mature at completely different rates.  The same holds true for the emergence and development of speech sounds.

When a young infant is babbling, what she is actually doing is imitating and practicing the speech sounds that she is hearing in her environment. This is part of the reason why the first sounds to develop are usually m, n, p, b, w, h and the vowel sounds.  It is incredibly reinforcing for a baby to have her parents repeat back what she is “saying.”  As she grows into a toddler and preschooler, her sound repertoire begins to expand to include t, d, k, g, f, s, z, l, sh, ch and y. As a general rule, the closer that she gets to her first day of kindergarten, the more consistently she is using these sounds correctly (especially if she finds storybooks interesting and they are part of her daily routine).  At this point, her mom and dad may also notice that the r, j, and v sounds are making an appearance (though they may have shown up earlier).  It is quite common that the th sound is the last one to be produced correctly.

Although speech-language pathologists refer to this general guideline when assessing a child’s articulation, there are many factors that can influence the development of speech.  A history of recurrent ear infections can affect when a child will acquire speech sounds (it’s pretty hard to produce what you can’t consistently hear) and sometimes there may be concerns with the coordination or strength of the muscles (lip, tongue and jaw) that support speech production.  For most children, speech develops within a normal range of time.  The key for those that are having some challenges being understood is early identification and intervention.  If you have any concerns about your child’s speech sound development, please feel free to contact a speech-language pathologist.  We’re here to help.

When people ask what I do for a living, unless they have already worked with a speech-language pathologist, they usually assume that I work only with children who have speech impairments.  To be fair, S-LPs do work with a lot of children who have difficulty producing a clear /r/ sound, or who have a lisp, or who make so many speech sound errors that only their mothers, or primary caregivers can understand them.  (And honestly, I have to say that it is incredibly gratifying to help a child, whose parents can barely understand a word he or she says, become completely intelligible).  But this really is just the tip of the iceberg of what our professional lives entail.

Speech-language pathologists can work with clients of all ages, with many different diagnosed (and undiagnosed) conditions or disorders, in all types of settings and on all kinds of helping teams.  We have the privilege of working with infants and toddlers, preschoolers, school-age children, adults and seniors. We also learn from helping clients that have learning disabilities, survived a stroke, or been born with multiple disorders or one of many syndromes.  We teach some clients strategies to help them compensate for difficulties with memory, reading comprehension, processing language, problem-solving, and stuttering, just to name a few.  We give workshops to teachers, educational assistants and parents of children with special needs, and present to college and university students. We provide speech and language services and work on teams in community health centres, schools, children’s and rehabilitative hospitals and client’s homes.  We do research to determine the effectiveness of assessment tools and therapy approaches and advocate for those that may benefit from our expertise.  We are a helping profession dedicated to serving our clients and their families with compassion, empathy and integrity.

So I am a speech therapist… at your service.