speech sound disorders
As children learn to speak, they generally make predictable patterns of sound ‘errors’. These patterns, called phonological processes, are typically gone by a certain expected timeline as children experiment with producing different sounds and become competent in pronouncing the specific sounds.
A Speech Sound Disorder/Delay may be diagnosed when a child has difficulties producing different sounds clearly by an expected age and/or exhibits atypical patterns in speech errors (e.g., lisp).
Signs and Symptoms
- Your child is more difficult to understand as compared to his/her peers who are of the same age
- Your child’s teachers have commented that it is difficult to understand much of what your child is saying
- Your child has a limited sound repertoire or makes a number of sound errors. Some examples include omitting sounds (e.g., ‘cup’ --> ‘up’) and syllables, substitutions (e.g., ‘dog’ --> ‘gog’), distortions (e.g., lateral lisp) and inconsistent errors (e.g., ’cake’ --> ‘tate’, ‘take’, ‘cake’).
If you are concerned or uncertain about your child’s speech development, consider seeking an assessment from a speech therapist. They can help to determine if your child's development is following an appropriate trajectory, advise on the type and severity of your child’s condition and recommend an individualized treatment plan accordingly.
Language disorder and delay
How can we help?
Based on your child’s needs, a Speech Therapist will perform a comprehensive assessment to identify whether your child has a language disorder, the severity of the language disorder and analyze the areas of strengths and needs specific to your child’s language profile. This is usually done through administering a standardized language assessment.
The assessment findings may reveal that your child has a language disorder that affects:
- Receptive language (i.e., Auditory Comprehension): e.g., a child may have difficulties following long and complex instructions, understanding the meanings of words etc.
- Expressive language (i.e., Verbal expression): e.g., a child may find it hard to express their thoughts and ideas in a cohesive manner, tell stories in a disorganized way, make grammatical errors and/or use non-specific words when trying to give explanations
- Higher-level language skills: e.g., a child has difficulties ‘reading between the lines’, and hence show difficulties in making inferences, predictions and problem-solving
Due to their specialized training in language development and knowledge in language disorders, a Speech Therapist would be able to evaluate your child’s language abilities and pinpoint his/her strengths and needs.
Targets for intervention are selected based on the findings from the assessments conducted. Some areas of intervention include:
- Vocabulary: e.g., building on a child’s vocabulary inventory, word-learning strategies
- Grammar: e.g., word structures (e.g., tenses, plurals), sentence structure (e.g., building simple and complex sentences)
- Listening Skills: e.g., comprehending instructions and longer auditory information
- Narrative Skills: e.g., learning to verbalize a story recount with various story elements included
- High-level language skills: e.g., using ‘critical-thinking’ skills to make deductions about a storyline (What do you think the character will do next? How do you know the character is disappointed with his present?)
Speech Therapists utilizes a range of strategies to assist your child in improving their abilities to use the above language concepts and gain mastery in various skillsets for language construction. It can be thought of as building and/or “repairing” the underlying language structures to result in a more efficient system. This would allow your child to become better at communicating his ideas, and do so in an efficient and meaningful manner. Depending on your child’s age, interests and needs, Speech Therapists will use different activities, toys, materials and/or games to work on the different language targets in the treatment plan.
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