Speech sounds develop slowly, as a child’s ability to coordinate and produce sounds develop. Because of this, there are often a lot of errors that are age appropriate for little ones and no cause for concern (check out our handy guide to speech sound development). There are, however, some speech errors that do not occur at any stage in typical speech sound development, and are red flags for a more serious speech disorder. In general, we don’t begin treating a child for speech difficulties until they are at least three years of age. Children under three are still in the early stages of learning to communicate, and the sounds they can and can’t use at this age can be pretty all over the place. Once a child turns three, however,…

A very common communication difficulty we see here at Child's Play are speech sound errors. Children who experience difficulty with their speech production have trouble using the correct sounds (e.g. replacing "k" with "t", like "tat" for "cat"). There are a number of different types of speech delays and disorders, and intervention for each will look slightly different based on their underlying issue. For the most part, however, intervention will follow the same hierarchical approach.. Why this approach? Unfortunately, just because a child can say a target sound, does not mean they can use in within their everyday conversation. Speech is habitual and mostly automatic, and for this reason it is very difficult for a child to change the sound patterns they use. This is why a gradual approach involving small…