Areas We Support
Late Talkers
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Late talkers are children who understand well, have good play and social skills, but use less words than expected for their age.
Learning to talk is a key milestone in a child’s development. A child’s ability to communicate and understand in the first few years of life will impact their readiness for school, ability to learn and make friends. Early language milestones are important and some toddlers may experience delays without any underlying developmental issues.
Most children learn to talk without any direct teaching. However, some children will need additional support through a speech pathologist. It is important to seek professional opinion early rather than using a “wait-and-see” approach. We recommend Early Intervention!
Is your toddler talking less than you would expect?
Speech Sounds
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Turning language into clear speech is a complex process! Our brain, lips, tongue, and mouth work together every time we speak. So, as children learn to talk, it’s natural for them to occasionally mispronounce words, their little mouths are working hard to master new sounds!
Pronunciation difficulties are common in children and often a normal part of development. However, when these difficulties continue past a certain age and it's hard for others to understand your child, this may indicate a speech sound disorder.
Common types of Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) can include phonological and articulation.
Phonological Difficulties
This is the most common type of SSD. Children with phonological difficulties struggle with learning the sound system or patterns in language, often simplifying sounds in ways that make it harder for others to understand them. These predictable, rule-based sound errors affect more than one sound but don’t mean the child cannot physically produce the sounds. An example of a phonological disorder is when there is a lack of contrast between sounds and the child uses one sound in place of another. The classic example is “I tawt I taw a puddy tat.”Articulation Difficulties
Articulation difficulties involve challenges with physically producing individual sounds, often due to the coordination of articulators like the lips, tongue, teeth, and jaw. A common example of an articulation difficulty is a lisp. Lisps are a common speech error seen in children however they are not part of typical development and should not be present once the “s” sound is acquired around 4 years old. There are two common types of lisps, an interdental lisp (the tongue coming between teeth) and lateral lisp (air moving around the side of the tongue).
Do people have difficulty understanding your child’s speech?
Receptive Language
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Receptive language is the “input” of language, for example, a child’s ability to listen and follow directions (e.g. “put on your coat”) relies heavily on the child’s receptive language skills. In typical development, children are able to understand language before they are able to produce it. Children who are unable to comprehend/understand language may have receptive language difficulties or a receptive language delay or disorder.
Children who have difficulty understanding language may struggle with the following:
Following directions
Understanding what gestures mean
Answering questions
Identifying objects and pictures
Reading comprehension
Understanding a story
There are several factors that influence receptive language development, including exposure to language, the quality of the language environment, and individual differences in language processing. Children who are surrounded by language (people engaging in conversation and interacting with them) are more likely to develop strong receptive language skills. This includes being exposed to a variety of speakers, engaging in conversations, and exposure to reading.
The ability to understand and comprehend spoken language that a child hears or reads
Expressive Language
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This includes using vocabulary, spoken grammar, sentence structure, and telling stories. Expressive language is the “output” of language.
Expressive language often develops after receptive language as children need to be able to understand language before they can use language to express themselves.
Developing expressive language skills is so important for children in the early years. These skills allow them to communicate with parents, family members and others in their life, and enable them to interact meaningfully in an early learning environment. Expressive language is particularly important as pre-school aged children prepare for starting school, because these skills help them to participate in classroom discussions, ask for help and make friends.
There are many patterns and rules in language that help us understand and interact with each other. For children, the development of these skills can begin with simple gestures such as waving, pointing at an object or using single words to ask for an object they want.
Expressive language skills include:
Using words and sentences
Making gestures or facial expressions
Asking questions, telling stories and having conversations
Building vocabulary
Labelling objects
Following grammatical rules correctly like sentence structure and verb tense
Signs of an Expressive Language Difficulty
Having trouble finding the right words
Difficulty expressing how they feel
Using less vocabulary than other children their age
Using simple or incomplete sentences
Difficulty asking questions or telling a story or talking about an event
Having difficulty in conversations
Difficulty naming objects and items
Making grammatical errors (e.g. using the wrong tense)
Exhibiting challenging behaviours such as hitting, biting or meltdowns when they are unable to communicate
It’s important to note that all children will have difficulty in these areas in the early years as they are still learning and developing. Children will build different expressive language skills at different ages.
The way we use words, sentences, signs and gestures to express our thoughts, wants, feelings, ideas and needs with others.
Literacy
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Early literacy skills, like phonological and phonemic awareness, lay the foundation for learning to read, write, and spell. Children need to understand that words are made up of individual sounds that can be broken up and rearranged. The journey into literacy begins with building these awareness skills through nursery rhymes, songs, and playful activities that make exploring sounds fun. Once children have a solid understanding of sounds, they can connect them to letters in words (known as phonics), using this knowledge to read and write. Literacy development is an accumulative process that takes place over many years, and of course, each child is different.
Literacy is the ability to speak, listen, read and write for effective communication
Attention & Working Memory
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Attention is a preverbal skill most children develop before they start to talk. Attention refers to the child’s ability to focus on an object, activity, or person for an extended period of time.
Memory refers to a person’s ability to hold information for both a short period of time and to recall the information after a delay (an extended period of time). Our speech and language therapists can assess your child’s attention and memory skills to determine any possible difficulties your child may be experiencing and the impact the difficulties may have on your child’s communicative skills.
Your child's ability to concentrate and use information effectively are key for their development
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Sometimes children with Autism (ASD) have difficulty reaching their language and play-skills milestones, and may experience difficulty with social communication.
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We work closely with your child and the important people in their environment to find and nurture their unique strengths and address their individual needs. We focus on goals like social communication, language development, literacy, and social skills. We place importance on equipping those closest to your child with tools to support and understand them better. Our aim is to ensure your child feels valued and understood, enabling them to build on their skills and thrive in their learning surroundings. In collaboration with your family, we will develop a personalised plan tailored to your child’s specific challenges and goals.
Social Communication Skills
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Social Communication skills include using words, gestures, and expressions, taking turns when talking, and following social rules. These skills help children make friends and share ideas.
Social communication difficulties, also known as pragmatic difficulties, occur when a child has trouble understanding or using verbal and non-verbal language appropriately in social situations, or may interpret social communication differently. Children with these challenges may struggle with various aspects of social interaction, leading to communication breakdowns. For example, a child with pragmatic difficulties might have trouble staying on topic during a conversation, telling a story in an organised way, making or maintaining eye contact, or respecting personal space when speaking with others.
The set of skills children use to talk and connect with others
Stuttering (Fluency)
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Stuttering disrupts the flow and ease of speech, affecting communication. It occurs when a child's speech is interrupted by involuntary pauses, repetitions, and longer sounds or words. They may also exhibit extra movements in their body and face while speaking. Stuttering typically begins in children around the ages of 3 to 4.
When a child gets "stuck" on a sound or repeats a sound, word, or phrase, making their speech less smooth (dysfluent)
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