We provide help for preschool students who have delays/deficits in the following areas of communication: articulation, fluency, receptive language, expressive language, and functional communication skills.
Articulation is producing speech sounds and combining the sounds to make words. A child with an articulation disorder may substitute, omit, add, or distort sounds. A child's articulation errors may or may not interfere with his/her ability to be understood, referred to as speech intelligibility. Speech sounds develop at different ages. This Sound Development Chart from the Talking Child website outlines the ages at which consonant sounds generally develop. A child may demonstrate a pattern of articulation errors referred to as phonological processes. Phonological processes are patterns of errors applied to sounds or sound groups to make them easier for a child to say. Phonological processes are a normal part of speech development and disappear at different ages however, if they persist beyond a certain age, the child may have a phonological process disorder. This handout from Super Duper, Inc. describes common phonological processes.
What you can do to help: Although it may be tempting to correct your child's mispronunciations, it is best to repeat back/expand what they said, modeling the sound correctly and perhaps putting a little extra emphasis on the sound. For example, if your child says "I pour" meaning that he/she is 4 years old, you say "Yes, you are four."
Fluency refers to a child's ability to produce speech smoothly and rhythmically by using coordinated movements of the mouth with breathing. A fluency disorder, commonly known as stuttering, occurs when a child has repetitions of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases, prolongations of sounds, or blockage of air when attempting to talk. A child may receive therapy for stuttering if his/her ability to communicate effectively with peers in the classroom is significantly affected by the stuttering. A detailed description of stuttering can be found on the ASHA website.
Receptive language is the ability to understand verbal and nonverbal communication, According to ASHA, a child with a receptive language disorder may have difficulty understanding what gestures mean, following directions, answering questions, identifying objects and pictures, and taking turns talking with others. Expressive language is the ability to make needs, wants, and ideas known. This can be done through words, signs, gestures, or a communication system. A comprehensive description of Preschool Language Disorders can be found on the ASHA website.
The following information is taken from www.speechandlanguagekids.com Functional Communication refers to the most basic of communication skills. This type of communication allows the child to make their wants and needs known. For most children, functional communication begins to emerge in the first year of life with babbling and gestures and is expanded in the following years with words, and later, simple sentences. However, for children with speech and language delays, this may happen much later. Any child who struggles to get his/her basic wants and needs met by communicating those needs to others would benefit from working on functional communication. This may be a child who is non-verbal (or who doesn't speak yet) or who does not yet have enough words to get his/her meaning across. In some instances a child's speech intelligibility may be poor enough that he/she needs to use a functional communication system. Not being able to speak can cause significant frustration to a child. Children who demonstrate frustration can be taught to use a functional communication system of some sort to help reduce or eliminate that frustration. Please see the following link that describes the different types of functional communication systems: https://www.speechandlanguagekids.com/functional-communication
Behavior is a means of communication. Many non-verbal children have challenging behaviors. This is because they want to communicate but are unable to do so and this is where the frustration may set in. This may lead to various behaviors including tantrums and meltdowns.
What you can do to help: The following link from The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning at Vanderbilt University further describes how behavior can impact a child’s ability to communicate and what you can do as parents to help your child to better express him/her self. http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/briefs/wwb19.pdf