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Aren't there speech milestones? Where can I find them?


Gil
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Its been brought to my attention that my sons speech doesn't seem to be growing up or developing along side his peers. He still mispronounces some letters and I'm just wondering if its still normal or if I should get it evaluated. Or how long can I wait for an evaluation? Personally I'm not totally alarmed, but it could just be because I understand him perfectly.

 

Where can I find a chart or something (preferably more than 1, I'd like to compare) to give me an idea of which consonants and blends he should have down?

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Google helped me with this when my eldest was still mispronouncing "r" and a few other things when she was 6/young 7.  It was still normal, but on the old side of normal.  :)  I didn't keep the link, but it gave age cutoffs for certain phonemes.  Let me see if I can find it quick.

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I can't help but there are several parents here that probably could.  Hopefully they will be able to respond in a timely fashion and SKL's link helps too.

 

FWIW, my nephew had issues with certain letters and my son has issues with certain blends.  We are working with DS using LiPS for the blend issues.  For my nephew, his parents were told the same thing, there was an issue with his speech.  They were also told by others that it would go away with time.  They chose to believe the latter.  The issues did not go away with time.  My nephew was more severe than my son and almost certainly has speech apraxia but his parents refused to ever have him tested.  They insisted they could understand him so others should too.   Unfortunately, other kids had a harder time, as did teachers and other family members.  He was treated as younger than he actually was and was teased as he got older for still having some challenges with speech.  It has negatively affected his performance at school and his interaction with other kids.

 

If you are getting feedback, I agree, look at the norms, compare different sources.  That is a good idea.

 

And if there are some things that look off, or you get additional feedback regarding this issue, you might consider an evaluation.  Most people won't say anything unless it is really pretty noticeable.  If there ARE issues like apraxia, the sooner you get help the more likely it will be that the issues can be successfully addressed.

 

Good luck, Gil!  

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Its been brought to my attention that my sons speech doesn't seem to be growing up or developing along side his peers. He still mispronounces some letters and I'm just wondering if its still normal or if I should get it evaluated. Or how long can I wait for an evaluation? Personally I'm not totally alarmed, but it could just be because I understand him perfectly.

 

Where can I find a chart or something (preferably more than 1, I'd like to compare) to give me an idea of which consonants and blends he should have down?

How old is this child?  There are charts for bare minimum standards before you need to be concerned.  Then you have the gap between what the dc is *trying* to say (communicative intent) because of their IQ.  The more of a gap you have there, the more concerned you should be.  If you have a HUGE gap between expressive and receptive, that's a red flag in anyone's book.  If you have a couple articulation errors, that's totally different.  

 

Yes, any speech milestones chart will do.  They should look, not only at articulation, but at intelligibility.  That means if you're in the grocery story and someone talks with him, DO THEY understand him and find him intelligible at an age-appropriate percentage?  It sounds very subjective, but it's actually important.  A child can have articulation issues that are age-appropriate and be intelligible.  So I would add to your question intelligibility and whether it's age-appropriate.

 

OneStep mentioned apraxia, so she must know more of your story.  Apraxia ALMOST NEVER occurs in isolation, so that's a serious thing to be considering.  You may have a more complex situation going on that is contributing to people around him suggesting that he is not progressing compared to his peers.  Are they looking at articulation, sentence structure, or more social maturity and behavioral?  

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How old is this child?  There are charts for bare minimum standards before you need to be concerned.  Then you have the gap between what the dc is *trying* to say (communicative intent) because of their IQ.  The more of a gap you have there, the more concerned you should be.  If you have a HUGE gap between expressive and receptive, that's a red flag in anyone's book.  If you have a couple articulation errors, that's totally different.  

 

Yes, any speech milestones chart will do.  They should look, not only at articulation, but at intelligibility.  That means if you're in the grocery story and someone talks with him, DO THEY understand him and find him intelligible at an age-appropriate percentage?  It sounds very subjective, but it's actually important.  A child can have articulation issues that are age-appropriate and be intelligible.  So I would add to your question intelligibility and whether it's age-appropriate.

 

OneStep mentioned apraxia, so she must know more of your story.  Apraxia ALMOST NEVER occurs in isolation, so that's a serious thing to be considering.  You may have a more complex situation going on that is contributing to people around him suggesting that he is not progressing compared to his peers.  Are they looking at articulation, sentence structure, or more social maturity and behavioral?  

What she said, but definitely the bolded.   :)  OhE is wise....

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OhE is talking about a high IQ not a low one. If his articulation is say low average or just below the norm with an average IQ it isn't as much of a gap but with a high IQ and articulation score below the norm it would be a much bigger gap. From what you described about your boys I doubt they are just average.

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Not having /l/ and /r/ solid at age 7 will get him ST (speech therapy) even with the public schools.  Definitely it's time.  

 

It sounds like he does have some intelligibility issues.  You can be intelligible even with articulation errors.  I think the age is 4, but somewhere around there you get to where kids should basically be 100% intelligible to a stranger.  That means if a person in the grocery makes conversation, the person knows what he said without needing clarification.  Even with age-typical articulation issues, the dc by that point should be *intelligible*.  It reflects a combo of prosody, all sorts of things, sort of like cake vs. flour and eggs, kwim? 

 

So yes, you should feel confident getting a speech eval.  Even the ps would say he needs speech, and they do the bare minimum they have to.  My boy, with all his problems, would get a whopping 1 hour of speech, and I think they said in a group, hahaha...  (way under-serviced)  So yes, you can feel confident asking for an eval.

 

Hmm, on the small side, I can't help you.  My dd has always been 95th+ percentile.  She wears tall clothes now.  My ds is more typical, only 50th percentile.  

 

There *is* a strong correlation between language and social skills.  There's a lot of discussion about why that is, but my point only is that you're NOT crazy.  My observation is that speech therapy also involves (at least in good speech therapy) social skills to some degree.  It would be interesting for you to sort of self-inventory and ponder how far this concern of yours about social immaturity and behavioral issues goes.  Some psychs will attribute a social delay to ADHD.  Some will go a little farther.  I think intervention is GOOD.  I think having the right words is GOOD.  Getting those right words, not so easy.  

 

 

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He's 7, almost 7.5 and I have no idea what apraxia is.

Does the dentist say anything? Did his teachers mention anything? Can strangers understand what he is saying if he need to ask for help? For example if he goes to the information desk and ask for information.

 

My brother's speech issues were so bad no one understands him outside of family. His teachers recommended speech therapy. His regular dentist said braces and speech.

He could write though so worse case he wrote if he needed to ask for help. For him the main problem was his teeth alignment (crooked teeth). After removal of some teeth and braces, his pronunciation improve to normal level even with braces on.

 

My 9 year old has an overbite and some gaps between teeth that affects his speech. There are some sounds that aren't as clear. Overall people could understand him. He has seen two pysch in the past two years for non-speech related stuff. The first psych pick out sounds that were off, the second psych didn't find it noticeable anymore unless the listener is focussing on sound rather than content. With his teeth changing from baby teeth to the permanent set, some gaps have gotten much smaller which helps in the pronunciation.

 

ETA:

My 9 year old is on the 15th percentile, small for age.

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A public school should be able to do a speech evaluation even if he is not in school right now. They can evaluate social skills too. If you have insurance to cover it private therapy would be another option. I mostly found private therapists better but usually I wasn't covered for that. Ds did get a really good speech therapist through the school who turned around his articulation issue. He went from strangers not understanding him to clear speech in a year.

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The SLP will check all that, so you just find who your insurance will cover and get it done.  Or if you want to go through the ps (less services, less quality, sometimes enough), go that way.  No, I have no clue if they'll cover you.

 

The SLP will look to see if dental and structural issues are affecting his speech.  That's part of their normal eval.

 

The SLP will have behavioral screening tools (forms, questionaires) and will probably have you fill some out.  Those will tell her if she should refer you for further evals.  Your ped also has these screening tools.  

 

Your best way to learn things is to call the practitioners and just talk with them.  Seriously, that's how I learn everything.  I just call and ask questions.  Almost everyone will talk with you and be helpful.  If they won't, move on to someone who is.  

 

On your sentence, if you understood what he meant, in spite of the articulation errors, it was intelligible.  If you had to ask him to clarify, then it wasn't intelligible.  Don't overthink it, kwim?  It's that really basic level of someone who meets you being able to understand what you said. 

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Unintelligible is when my youngest daughter talks like her mouth is full of marbles.  :P  She was not late in articulating any sounds, and 50% of the time she sounds very articulate, perhaps beyond her years.  About 10% of the time (used to be 50%) she sounds like gobbledygoop.  It went from 50% to 10% over the past couple of years, possibly because I was a hag about it and made her try harder to speak clearly.

 

My older kid was on the late side for getting some sounds.  She still says some words wrong, e.g., occasionally substituting v for th.  She can be understood by strangers (intelligible) even with the substituted sounds.

 

Neither of my kids has had speech therapy, though my eldest worked with the speech teacher to try to figure out some of her auditory processing issues in 1st grade.

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I think you guys live in a different world then me  :lol: 

 

Not having R and L at 7 will NOT definitely get you speech therapy in school here -- you have to be in the bottom 5% overall to get speech therapy.  The school SLP may try and squeeze you in if you are having trouble but aren't in the bottom 5%.   Took me years to understand that though (since they were squeezing DD in).   Once your only trouble is R and intelligibility you are out of luck.

 

The private SLP's I saw did not examine DD's teeth/bite (don't know if school's did). 

 

Intelligibility was also not addressed at our private (highly recommended) SLP -- they were focused on whether DD could make the sounds not whether she used them in every day speech.    Mumbling, mouth full of marbles, slurring, however you want to say it - it makes her incredibly hard to understand.      The rest was just practice and reminding according to them.  But practice and correction hasn't worked here unfortunately.

 

OTH if OP's DS can't make a L or R sound-- I would definitely look into private speech therapy.

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Laughing Cat and I must live in the same world. I've been to see the school district's speech therapist 3 times for 3 different children and none of mine ever qualified for help. We've also been to private speech therapists, which our insurance didn't cover past the evaluation.

 

The first time we went, the slp was listening for speech issues (as is her job) but I now know my son had going on was early warning signs of dyslexia with sound substitutions. He could make all the age-appropriate sounds according to their charts, (so he didn't qualify) but he was difficult to understand because he often substituted in the wrong sound for the right one. His sound substitutions included some of his own made-up non-English vowel sounds. I still hear some non-English vowels sounds out of one of mine, particularly with r's and l's. Making the r and l sounds require the tongue to lift and curl, and those sounds have a peculiar influence on vowels.

 

Nevertheless, despite not qualifying for service, it was well worth our going to see speech therapists. For one thing, it started some documentation. Better still--the last time we saw the school district's slp, she gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement and support for how I'm parenting and with our homeschooling. I came home that day feeling good about how we are doing. 

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The first time we went, the slp was listening for speech issues (as is her job) but I now know my son had going on was early warning signs of dyslexia with sound substitutions. He could make all the age-appropriate sounds according to their charts, (so he didn't qualify) but he was difficult to understand because he often substituted in the wrong sound for the right one. His sound substitutions included some of his own made-up non-English vowel sounds. I still hear some non-English vowels sounds out of one of mine, particularly with r's and l's. Making the r and l sounds require the tongue to lift and curl, and those sounds have a peculiar influence on vowels.

DD had the sound substitution/moving too and it was never addressed by the private SLP -- they talked about how unusual it was.  No one, private or school, addressed the idea of dyslexia in any way.   The only thing that helped it was doing LIPS (at home).    Recently I have seen some language videos that talk about where the tongue needs to be to make the different sounds in different languages - fascinating stuff!   (here's some -- I'm not sure these are the ones I was most fascinated by but by the same guy and no time to look further)

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Total aside, but vowels are very problematic.  We spent quite a bit of time with the LIPS vowel circle, chanting through them, feeling them, identifying them, connecting written to sounds, using the physical inputs.  I just got him a cute Vowel Owls game I thought I could milk some more.  Articulation and phonemic awareness are closely linked on my ds.

 

I don't know, I'm struggling with the marbles analogy.  My ds doesn't sound like he has marbles.  He's considered about 80% intelligible, and it basically just means if he says 10 words to you, you'll miss two of them.  Not precisely how they calculate it, but that's the effect.  It's the "say that again" thing.  

 

And as for schools, I guess we're just blessed.  Or maybe they were being helpful?  I mean, I walked in with a kid with SLDs and a serious motor planning problem and asked for help and they're giving me help.  So whether they were more generous with him because of his known diagnosis, I don't know.  So you're saying same stats but no apraxia they would NOT have put it in the IEP?  Beats me.  They seem to be pretty stinkin' picky about putting in only what they would have done for their own students.  That's how the law works.  Dunno.

 

And if you'd like to rejoice, we sign our initial IEP next week!  Yeah!!!!!  Totally psyched about that.  That qualifies us for a state scholarship so I have funding to get him speech, etc.  Over the moon.  

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I don't know, I'm struggling with the marbles analogy.  My ds doesn't sound like he has marbles.  He's considered about 80% intelligible, and it basically just means if he says 10 words to you, you'll miss two of them.  Not precisely how they calculate it, but that's the effect.  It's the "say that again" thing.  

To me the marbles analogy means -- nothing DD says is clear and articulated.  It is all slurred together.    I usually call it mumbling  or slurring -- but marbles in your mouth is a perfect analogy -- like you're never able to get your tongue in quite the right position.   Also kinda like where I grew up, the ends of the words were all soft, creating a specific accent that can be quite unclear to people not from there -- by making it unclear where one word ends and the next begins.   When learning another language I encountered speakers like that -- some people naturally spoke sharp and clear and others slid from one word to the next.  I know I am a slider even though I don't retain my childhood accent.      Except for DD, all of her syllables suffer from that, not just the ends of words.

 

For comparison -- if DD says 10 words, it's not that I miss 2,  I might not understand any of them.   It's more like out of 10 sentences I might miss 2.  OTH - if I ask her to articulate the same words, she can do it just fine.  But even with what feels like constant "I can't understand you"s she will not articulate sharply without my specific request (bringing on complaints and whining too).  Note: it has gone back downhill lately due to orthodontia, prior the mumbling was still constant but it was at least mostly understandable by family and generally people who know her (not just family) but not by strangers.

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Laughing Cat, again I relate to what you are writing. If left to their own devices without correction, our children could develop their own marble language. We could call it "Marblish"; derived from English, yet different from just a regional accent.

Oh E (or others interested)--to explain what we mean, think about songs. Sometimes while the melody is beautiful, many of the words to songs are unclear or misunderstood. Singing requires consonants to be over-articulated, otherwise the words just all blend. For some people, their words tends to just all run together, leaving the listeners to wonder what they said. Although they can make all the right sounds in isolation, they don't articulate all of them and sometimes they take some "artistic licence" to replace one sound with another.

Singing lessons are far cheaper than speech therapy, and may help with the kind of problems I described. Vowels are of special importance when singing too, because those are what should hold the notrs, while consonants close them off....

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