Does my four-year-old have a Speech or language delay?

Speech and language delays in preschool aged children often go unnoticed and untreated until they are school-aged for a variety of reasons. Many parents of 3-5 years olds are simply not aware of the early signs of speech and communication delays.

Others might have been told by family or friends that their child is simply a ‘late talker’ who will ‘catch up’ once they start school. However, the reality is that recognizing speech and language delays EARLY and implementing appropriate early interventions results in improved overall outcomes for your child's communication and language development.

Below, we have briefly outlined some of the major communication milestones that most typically developing children master by the age of four years. If your child has not met the communication milestones detailed below by the age of 4.5 to 5 years old, we encourage you to consult with your Pediatrician and/or a licensed Speech Language Pathologist to learn about the benefits of in home speech therapy services.

The following communication milestones were adapted from the American Speech Language & Hearing Association website, CDC.gov website as well as the Rosetti Infant-Toddler Language Scale:

4 to 5 Years: Typical Language & Speech Milestones:

Receptive Language - how your child understands language

Can Answer ‘When’ questions with time related concepts

Besides responding to 'who, what, where, why' questions, your child should now be capable of answering 'when' questions using simple time-related words like 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow.' Although children at this age might still make mistakes with specific calendar terms (e.g., mixing up 'weeks' and 'months' or the days of the week), it is no longer typical for them to confuse 'when' and 'where' question types.

Understands more advanced prepositions – e.g. ‘behind, beside, between’

Your child should now be able to follow multi-step verbal directions involving more advanced prepositions (e.g. “Place the red block under the table”). They should also be using specific prepositions when describing the location of objects. For example, instead of stating, ‘there’ and pointing to an object (e.g. if you ask, ‘Where is the noun?’), your child should be able to describe its exact location using a prepositional phrase (e.g. ‘It’s under/on/above/behind the noun”). Fun ways to help teach more advanced prepositions include: eye-spy books, multi-step direction games like Simon Says and charades and around-the-house scavenger hunts with clues (e.g. “look behind the couch in the living room”).

Names and Identifies Many Opposites & Categories

By the age of four, your child should now be able to identify and name common opposites such as: big/small, same/different, wet/dry, hot/cold, tall/short.  They should also be able to sort common objects by categories as well as identify items that don’t belong in a category (e.g., when presented with ‘banana, apple, orange, jeans,’ your child should recognize that ‘jeans’ do not belong in the same category as types of fruit/food.)

To help teach and reinforce language concepts like opposites and categories, we love using memory matching games, ‘opposites’ books and descriptive language games like ‘HeadBandz” which are geared for preschool-aged children. We also like this list of ‘The 8 best category games for young kids’ by EmpoweredParents: https://empoweredparents.co/category-games/.

Expressive Language – How your child uses language to communicate with others

Speaks in Complete Sentences of 4+ Words

By the age of four, your child should now be using complete sentences that are 4 or more words in length. By the age of four, most children can create longer compound and complex sentences, using conjunctions like 'and', 'because', 'if', and 'when'.

Makes fewer grammatical errors

Your four-year-old child should be correctly using the following grammatical markers ‘most of the time’ in their speech:

·      Regular plural -s (e.g. “two cats”)

·      Beginning to use common regular plural forms (e.g. “two mice”)

·      Regular past tense -ed (e.g. “hopped”)

·      Present tense -ing verbs (e.g. “hopping”)

·      Personal pronouns (I, my, mine)

Conversational speech is 90-100% intelligible

By the time they reach five years old, most children are easily understood by others with only a few minor speech sound errors. Since the ‘r’ and ‘th’ consonant sounds develop later and might not be fully mastered until ages 5-6, the speech sound errors that may still occur at this age include:

-       Substituting ‘w’ for /r/ – “wed” /red

-       Substituting ‘f’ for voiceless ‘th’ – “teef”/teeth

-       Substituting ‘d’ for voiced ‘th’ – “broder”/brother

**When reviewing milestone checklists, it’s important to remember that every child is unique and children may develop some of these skills a few months earlier or later than the ‘expected’ age range. These milestones are meant to be a general guideline for parents, based on the typical stages of language development observed in children.

ABOUT US:

Sunny Spot Speech provides private speech therapy services and evaluations for kids in home, online, at your child's preschool, daycare, private school, or at another community location throughout Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. We have an incredible and growing team of bilingual (Spanish and English speaking) Los Angeles based Speech Language Pathologists who are knowledgeable in the assessment and treatment of a wide range of communicative disorders, including (but not limited to) children with Language Disorders and Developmental Delays, Hearing Loss, AAC users, Fluency disorders, Articulation and Phonological Disorders, Childhood Apraxia of Speech, and Gestalt Language Processors.

We provide bilingual pediatric speech therapy services in the following Los Angeles locations: Northridge, Granada Hills, Encino, Tarzana, Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Van Nuys, San Fernando, Valley Village, Burbank, Calabasas.

Contact us for a free phone consultation if you’re concerned about your child’s speech, language or communication abilities: Phone: 818-350-3107 or Email: info@sunnyspotspeech.com.