Communication in Children: Development of Speech Sounds: 0-5 years

I’m welcoming my lovely online friend Julie back to the blog today. Julie is a Mum, Speech Pathologist and blogger (at The Useful Box).  Julie has an amazing way of explaining speech development in children and I appreciate her generosity in sharing her expertise on my blog. You see all Julie’s comprehensive posts about communication in children here: Julie Miller — Communication in Children.

Development of Speech Sounds: 0-5 years

Speech Pathologists are probably most commonly known for assisting children with speech sounds. Though this is not all we do, speech sound development is important in preschool-aged children as a precursor to development of pre-literacy and literacy skills. If you think your child is having difficulty with production of speech sounds, early referral to a Speech Pathologist is always recommended.

Guidelines for speech sound development

The guidelines indicate what is observed in at least 75% of children at a given age.

At 1 year, most children are:

• Able to alternate consonant sounds in their babble (also known as variegated babbling) e.g. bada, gaba, deebee
• Using a variety of consonant-vowel combinations (usually without meaning) e.g. boo, ma, goo
• Using some consonant-vowel-consonant combinations (again, without meaning) e.g. gab, baf, fad
• Beginning to imitate adult intonation (pitch, sentence contours) in babble
• Attempting one or more meaningful single words. Sound errors often occur (e.g. mum, dar (for car), wower (for flower)

Contact a Speech Pathologist if:

• Your 1-year-old is not babbling at all
• Your 1-year-old has a limited repertoire of speech sounds (e.g. no consonant sounds or only one consonant sound such as “b”)

At 2 years, most children are:

• Able to be understood by a familiar adult (parent) 50-75% of the time
• Commonly making errors in the production of their speech sounds
• Likely to exhibit the following ‘normal’ speech production error patterns (referred to as phonological processes)
  • • Deletion of final consonant sounds (e.g. dog – “do”, card – “car”)
    • Fronting of back consonant sounds (‘k’ and ‘g’ become ‘t’ and ‘d’, so car – “tar”, go – “dough”)
    • Stopping of fricative (longer, airy) speech sounds (s, f, and sh sounds e.g. soap – “doap”, fish – “bish”)

Contact a Speech Pathologist if:

• You are unable to understand your 2-year-old’s speech (more than 50% of the time)
• Your 2-year-old has no consistent patterns in their speech errors (e.g. one day “dog” is produced “do”, the next day it is “gok”, the next day it is “ba”)
• Your 2-year-old seems to have weak or insufficient control of oral muscles (This can often be noted in excessive dribbling and/or difficulty with chewing/ eating solid, crunchy or chewy foods, in addition to difficulty with speech sound production)

At 3 years, most children are:

• Able to be understood by a familiar adult (parent, preschool teacher) 75 – 100% of the time.
• Able to produce the following speech sounds accurately in most contexts (sometimes children struggle to produce a particular sound in one or two specific words only – this is not a cause for concern at age 3): h, y, w, ng (as in sing, m, n p, b, t, d, k, g)
• Able to produce the ‘f’ sound accurately in most contexts by 3.5 years
• Likely to exhibit the following sound production error patterns (phonological processes)
  • • Assimilation of consonant sounds (both or all consonants in a word are produced in the same position in the mouth, although the child can use the sounds correctly in other word contexts) e.g. dog – “gog” or “dod”; mine  – “mime”, yellow – “lellow”
    • Deletion of weak (unstressed) syllables in words (e.g. elephant – “efent”, potato – “tato)
    • Cluster reduction (when 2 or more consonant sounds occur together e.g. cl, br, fr, spl, one consonant sound is omitted) e.g. spoon – “poon”, train – “tain”, clean – “cean”)

Contact a Speech Pathologist if:

• Your 3-year-old has no consistent patterns in their speech errors (see “2 years” section above)
• Your 3-year-old appears to have weak or insufficient oral muscle control (see “2 years” section above)
• You have difficulty understanding what your 3-year-old says to you
• Your 3-year-old is not able to produce h, y, w, ng, m, n, p, b, t, d, k, g sounds in most contexts
• Your 3.5-year-old is not able to produce f sounds in most contexts
• Your 3-year-old is continuing to delete final consonant sounds in words (e.g. dog – “do”), stop fricative consonants (e.g. soap – “doap”, fish – “bish”) or front the back consonant sounds (e.g. car – “tar”)

{My daughter is about 3 year, 3 months in these clips. She demonstrates a lisp on production of ‘s’ and ‘z’ sounds (common up to 4.5 years). My son is just under 2 in the first section and just over 2 in the second part of the clip. He uses most of the common patterns of sound errors. You may notice deleting of final and beginning consonant sounds, fronting of k/g sounds to t/d, deletion of syllables, assimilation of consonant sounds. You may not comprehend much of what Mr. 2 says! This is normal at age 2.}

At 4 years, most children are:

• Able to be understood by a familiar adult almost 100% of the time.
• Able to produce all ‘3-year-old’ speech sounds accurately in most contexts, as well as producing the ‘l’, ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ sounds accurately in most contexts
• Able to produce the ‘j’, ‘s’ and ‘z’ sounds accurately by 4.5 years in most contexts
• Likely to exhibit the following sound production error patterns (phonological processes)
  • • Stopping of ‘sh’, ‘ch’ and ‘j’ sounds so they are produced as ‘d’ or ‘t’ e.g. share – “dare”, jump – “dump”, chair – “tair”
    • Gliding of ‘l’ and ‘r’ sounds to be produced as ‘w’ or ‘y’ e.g. run – “wun”, leg – “yeg”
    • Stopping of ‘th’ sounds so they are produced as ‘t’ or ‘d’ e.g. them – “dem”, thing – “ting”
• Possibly still producing a lisp sound on production of ‘s’ and ‘z’ sounds. (The tongue protrudes between the front teeth on production of this sound). This type of lisp is common in children until 4.5 years.

Contact a Speech Pathologist if:

• Your 4-year-old displays any difficulties as outlined in the 2 and 3-year-old sections above
• Your 4-year-old is unable to produce ‘l’, ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ sounds accurately in most contexts
• Your 4-year-old is continuing to assimilate consonant sounds in words (e.g. dog – “dod” or “gog”)
• Your 4-year-old consistently omits sounds in consonant clusters (e.g. spoon – “poon”, glass – “gass”)
• Your 4-year-old consistently omits syllables in multiple words (e.g. elephant – “efent”, tomato – “mato”)
• Your 4.5-year-old in unable to produce the ‘j’, ‘s’ and ‘z’ sounds accurately in most contexts
• Your 4.5-year-old continues to lisp on production of the “s’, “z” sounds, or produces a lisp on “sh”, “ch” or “j” sounds

At 5 years, most children:

• Still have difficulty with production of ‘r’ sounds (accurate production develops by 6 years in 75% or children) and ‘v’ sounds (accurate production also by 6 years).
• May produce ‘th’ sounds as ‘f’ or ‘v’ e.g. think – “fink”, bath – “baf”. Accurate production generally develops by 8.5 years, however in some areas, ‘th’ produced as ‘f’ is considered an acceptable variant. This does not impact on listener comprehension.

Contact a Speech Pathologist if:

• Your child demonstrating any of the difficulties as outlined in the 2,3 and 4-year-old sections above
• Your child is unable to produce the ‘r’ and ‘v’ sounds accurately by age 6.
• You feel that your child’s literacy development is being impacted by difficulty with speech sound production

Please contact a Speech Pathologist if you have any concerns about your child’s speech sound production…or feel free to leave any questions in the comments below and I’ll pop by and answer them.

Reference: Bowen, C. (1998) Developmental Phonological Disorders: A Practical Guide for Families and Teachers. Melbourne: ACER Press

Read Julie’s Other Posts

Baby Communication: Newborn to 1

Communication in Children: 12 months to 24 months

Communication in Children: 2-3 years

Communication in Children: 3-4 years

Communication in Children: Development of Speech Sounds: 0-5 years