Does your child have a speech impediment or not reaching their speech milestones as quickly as their friends? Will it just go away on its own? Instead of saying “soup” my child says “thoup”, is this a speech impediment? Does my child need a speech therapist?
Raising children comes with a lot of questions. Especially, when your child’s speech patterns start to emerge. While there may not be a clinical “test” to diagnose if your child’s speech impediment will resolve on its own, it is important to talk about your concerns with a speech therapist. There are many reasons why a child may have speech or language developmental challenges.
A preschooler or toddler may eventually outgrow their speech issue, but early intervention is important for a speech impediment. The earlier a speech impediment is identified and addressed, less of a negative impact it will have on the emotional and social aspects.
All children learn and develop at different rates. This includes their speech and language milestones. Speech impediments include stuttering, lisps, and articulation disorders.
Stuttering
Stuttering, also known as disfluency, is a common speech disorder or impediment. There are two different types of stuttering, neurogenic and developmental. The more typical stuttering issue is often outgrown, but both can benefit from speech therapy.
Lisps
There are four types of lisps, lateral, palatal, interdental, dentalized. Palatal and lateral lisps are not as likely to be outgrown. They all can benefit from speech therapy, especially if it is not outgrown by age 6 or 7.
Articulation
There are many forms of speech sound or articulation challenges that a child may experience.
Distorted sounds: This happens when the proper sound of a letter or word is distorted. Such as “dis” for “this” or “thoup” for “soup”.
Adding sounds: This is when a letter is added to a word. For instance, instead of “dog” the child says “doga”.
Substituting sounds: This is when a child may say “wabbit” instead of “rabbit” or “sree” instead of “three”.
Deleting sounds: Often a consonant is left out, instead of saying “tree” a child will say “tee” or instead of “cheese” they will say “chee”.
If you think your child may have a speech disorder or impediment, the best thing you can do is to contact First Words Speech Therapy for an evaluation. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) also has a online checklist for parents.
