If your child is difficult to understand, it may be due to a Speech Sound / Articulation Disorder. This means that they are not using the correct sounds in the correct parts of words, which makes them difficult to understand.
Sometimes children have difficulty speaking clearly, because they do not know how to say certain sounds. In other words, the target sounds are not in their sound "inventory". For example, a child may say, "wed" instead of the color "red". This may be because they have not yet learned how to say the /r/ sound!
Other times, children do have certain target sounds in their inventory, but they have difficulty coordinating their articulators (lip, teeth, tongue, palate, voice box) to make sounds correctly within a certain context. For example, a child may know how to say /s/ and /l/ sounds, but when they are combined to form an sl-blend, they have difficulty. They may say, "led" or "sed" instead of "sled", for example.
If you are wondering which sounds your child should be saying for their age, look at the graphic below.
As you can see, there is a very specific developmental sequence for speech sound acquisition! If your child is having difficulty with some of the sounds they should be saying at their age, they may benefit from a Speech Sound & Language Evaluation with IGNITE to determine whether Speech/Language Therapy is right for them!
You can schedule a FREE consultation first, by clicking on the "SCHEDULE" tab in navigation bar at the top of the page.
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