Articulation Development

Articulation is the production of speech sounds; it is the “speech” part of speech and language services. Many parents of younger students wonder if their child’s speech errors are age appropriate or not. The link below displays an easy to read chart of the development of children’s speech sounds. It is important to remember that all children develop differently at different ages so view the charts below more as a guideline (see charts from blog posting 4/8/2014).

Should I be concerned?

Sometimes children experience numerous sound errors in connected speech even though they may be able to produce sounds correctly in words. Sometimes it is a matter of getting your child to slow down his/her speech. Other times the sounds have not yet been generalized to conversational speech. It may be time to be concerned if familiar listeners have trouble understanding your child’s speech and/or if your child is becoming frustrated when he/she is not understood.

There are numerous ways to remediate articulation errors, some of which you can do yourself at home such as following a home program put together by an SLP. General education services are also available on a short-term basis. Talk to your child’s teacher or a speech/language therapist if you have any concerns.

Crystal Hutchins, MS/CCCslp