06/05/2020
When to start speech and language therapy for my kid ?
speech and language therapy is scientific and evidence based therapeutic science discipline. it helps babies, infants, toddlers and children with developmental delay and difficulties due to premature at birth, and other postnatal complications like delayed birth cry, incubation in NICU,seizures and neurological problems like micro and macro cephalic, meningitis, encephalitis, cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders,learning disabilities,genetic and neurological conditions like down syndrome, fragile x syndrome, and other.
children who had complications at prenatal, peri - natal and post natal part of life will develop difficulties in understanding and speaking language orally on par with their age .
speech and language skills help infants and toddlers to connect and learn about world and how to behave to obtain or fulfill needs. speech and language skills promote children intelligence skill, logic and reasoning ability, develop imaginative play skills, have an associative play with siblings and learn about different experiences ,emotions and enjoyment.
speech and language skills help children to communicate their everyday life needs like i'm hungry, i want biscuit, i want water, i want a balloon,where is mom? to elders, siblings and other . This help children to learn and share emotions and develop their cognitive, socio-emotional, education skills. children with delay in speech and language skills with not able to comprehend or express language on par with their age .
To parents surprise children with normal development will able to smile at parents and caregivers and to a human face as early as 2-4 weeks after birth, can able to recognize their name and respond to name call by turning head by 4-6 months of age, can imitate tongue movements, facial expressions, wave bye- bye by 6 months of their age, can point to their needs by 8 months age, can follow parents directions, eye moments, intonation and can understand are they happy, sad?can precisely call mama and Dada to their parents by 1 year of age.
By 2 years children can follow one step and two step commands like take your bottle, your toy is on bed, they can understand a vocabulary of 100- 500 words of household items, and categories like animals, fruits, vegetables, colors, numbers, shapes. They can say orally first words of about minimum 50 words to maximum of more than 500 words like Dada, mama, ball, up, fan, light, dog, there , phone, plate, glass , spoon what not a big repertoire of words of our every day life.
By 2.5 years they can understand a story and can tell a story by using 2-3 word sentences and by this age they can even understand all action verbs, adverbs , prepositions like which is big/small, near/far, hot/cold,hard/soft, in/out, up/down. see this promotes their cognition skills.
By 3-5 years their understanding of language improves from 3 word sentences to 5 word sentences, can understand a story with higher vocabulary, different and difficult grammatical constructions, can understand past, present and future tense of things, have time concept and can express 3-5 word sentences to communicate their needs , expressions, emotions, can hold a conversation with a stranger or an adult to express and share their needs, the important intelligence skill you can see they have grown curious like ask you n number of questions about functioning of objects and about world around them .
By 6 years they communicate like an adult, like their sentences are appropriate in terms of grammar, and when they speak their is no any errors in terms of pronunciation and have greater pragmatic skills to initiate,follow,discuss or hold a debate to express their perceptions.
See a child is travelling from basic needs like hungry, thirsty to expressing perceptions orally and hold a debate from birth to six years of age . This feels totally like a magic Right !which happens so unconsciously to parents and people around children when they are developing speech and language skills but imagine this process with child with understanding or processing a language with no hearing complaints nor prominent visual difficulties and who appears completely normal on outer exterior but has great difficulty in talking orally because of neurological and socio-emotional disorders like autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorders/ attention deficit hyperactivity or learning disabilities.
parents and families kindly always be a conscious observer of you babies, infants, toddlers, children language learning skills track their developmental milestones by consulting a speech language pathologist, early interventionist, developmental therapist right from birth to 3 years with follow up for every 15 day interval. consult a speech language pathologist once you find red flags in development with your child with concerns related to speech , language, behavior, intelligence, walking and sensory processing skills.
Act as early as possible that is right from birth so when to start speech therapy services as early as from birth with babies who are at risk and with normal babies for regular screening of developmental milestones to recognize delays and developmental red flags and provide speech and language therapy as early as possible .
so regular speech and language therapy services can be started least by 3 months of age.so consult your speech language pathologist today and follow their guidance to make your child speak like a pro.
written by -
😊 Dr Amulya Reddy, Early interventionist, speech and language pathologist , feeding therapist.
