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Frequently Asked questions

First words

My child has not started speaking or is not using many words.  Should I be concerned?

Most children start saying their first words around somewhere between 8 and 12 months.  Keep in mind that when a child starts saying their first words, they will not pronounce the word in the same way that an adult does.  For example the word 'ball' may be 'ba', the 'cat' may be 'at'.  A sound sequence is considered a first word when the child uses the same set of sounds each time they see a particular item.  That is, every time you child sees the ball, s/he says 'ba'.

There is a lot of variation between children.  The following milestones can give you a guide

Age in months       Words spoken in 50% of children[1]
12                                  5                                             
18                                 80
24                                300

Given the wide variation when children begin to speak, as a rule of thumb, consider an assessment for your child if at:

• 12 months: Your child does 'chat' (using mostly non-speech words), did not babble when younger, and is not using gestures (e.g. pointing, waving, extending arm to show you something), putting arms up to be picked up).
• 18 months: If you child has no words.
• 2 years: If your child has fewer than 50 words.

In many cases, teaching parents some strategies for enhancing their child's language skills will be all that is required and with a language rich home environment, many children will catch up to their peers.

In some cases, disabilities can be detected as early as 12 months of age.  In many other cases there can be early warning signs, but the disorder will not be evident until the child is around 2 or 3 years old.  Regardless of whether a child has a delay or a disorder, providing the parents with strategies to enhance oral language skills and providing children with a language rich home environment, will give a child the very best start.

1.  Fenson, L., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D. J., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S. and Bates, E., (2007). MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories.  User's Guide and Technical Manual. 2nd Ed. Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.

Development of Speech Sounds

My child's speech sounds are not fully developed.  How do I know if their speech is developing normally?

All children have some errors in their speech until they are about 6 or 7 years of age.  There is a wide variation in when children develop their sounds. However it is important that most errors have resolved before starting school. Below is information which will give you an idea of whether your child's speech is developing as expected.

As a guide according to the Atkins Fishure Articulation Survey, 75% of children have developed the following sounds by the following ages [1]:

• By 3;6 years: h, p, m, ng, n, w, b, k, g, d, t, j.
• By 4;0 years: f, l, sh, ch, and z (as in measure)
• By 4;6 years: s*, z, dz (as in judge)
• By 5;0 - 6;0 years: r
• Around 6;0 - 7;0 years years: th as in this and th as in thing

* NB: Most children have a fronted /s/ (lisp) when they first start to say the /s/ sound.  However this usually resolves into a mature /s/ sound by the age of 4;6 years.  The fronted /s/, however, is usually present by 3;6 months.

Clusters are where two speech sounds occur together without a vowel in between.  For example 'st', 'bl', 'cr'.  Although a child may be able to say a sound, their ability to say it in a cluster occurs later.  According to McLeod et. al's [2] review of the literature around cluster development, 75% of children tend to develop their clusters by the following ages.

• 3;6 years: tw, kw
• 4;0 - 5;0 years: sp, st, sk, pl, bl, kl, gl, fl
• 5;0 years: pr, br, tr, dr, kr, gr, fr
• 6;0 years: thr, skw, spl
• 8 years: spr, str, skr

Overall speech intelligibility improves as develop.  As a general rule

• By 2 years, a child's speech is about 50% intelligible, and intelligible mainly to family
• By 3 years, a child's speech is about 75% intelligible
• By 4 years, anyone should be able to understand a child's speech, even though the child will continue to have some speech sound errors.

When should I seek assistance?

A delay in developing speech sounds is common in young children.  Speech therapy can assist children catch up to their peers.  Consider speech therapy for your child if:

• They are more than 6 months behind in any of the milestones listed above
• They are self conscious of their speech or are being teased
• They are in kinder and have multiple speech errors.  Ideally children have most of their speech sounds before they enter school so they are ready to learn to read and write.

In some cases, children have a speech sound disorder such as childhood apraxia of speech, or a developmental disability that affects speech development such as dysarthria.  In these cases, warning signs might include:

• weakness or slurring of speech sounds
• difficulty eating, chewing, swallowing, sucking
• inconsistent speech errors
• vowel distortions and errors
• very few consonants present

If you suspect your child may have a speech sound disorder, early intervention is important.

[1] Atkin N.& Fisher J., (1996) Articulation Survey, Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne
[2] Smit et al. (1990) cited in McLeod, S., van Doorn, J., and Reed, V. R., (2001) Normal Acquisition of Consonant Clusters.  American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 10, 99-110.

Information about sharing books with very young children

When should I introduce my child to books?

• By 9 to 12 months of age, your baby may be very interested in sharing books with you.  If you choose the right books, and use strategies that engage young children, your child is likely to really enjoy this activity.


Why is it important to introduce books to infants?

There are many reasons to introduce books to very young children.

• Babies are developing their ability to speak words, and to understand what others say to them.  Book sharing is a fabulous way of assisting babies to build their knowledge of words and develop their spoken language skills.
• At 9 – 12 months of age, babies are building a solid understanding of words, even though they may not be saying many yet.  Around this age, babies start saying single words.  Although the words may not yet be clear you are likely to notice that they use the same set of sounds for the same object each time.  E.g. you may hear ‘mi’ each time you pour your child a cup of milk’.
• Babies who are exposed to books begin to associate books with enjoyment, and when they are shared snuggled up with their parents, favourite Aunty, or grandparent, they also associate books with comfort.  They are therefore more likely to seek out books to share with loved ones.
• Early book sharing skills include recognizing objects within the books and relating these objects to their world outside of the book sharing activity (decontextualisation), beginning to realize that that books have pages that you turn, and starting understand that books have a start, a middle and an end.

1. Pierroutsakos, S.L. and J.S. DeLoache, Infants' Manual Exploration of Pictoria Objects Varying in Realism. Infancy, 2003. 4(1): p. 131-156.
2. DeLoache, J.S., et al., Grasping the nature of pictures. Psychological Science, 1998. 9(3): p. 205 - 210.
3. Gross, D., Infancy.  Development from birth to three. 2008, Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.