Our tiniest humans sometimes face challenges with the basics of getting their nutrition down. We often see struggles with newborn and infant feeding, latching difficulty, struggles to gain weight and to drink from the bottle, feeding aversions, difficulty transitioning to solid foods, and general failure to thrive. Parents pray, uncertain whether all is well, and bring their little ones to us.
Our therapy sessions with our tiny patients focus on improving feed-swallow skills. We help the child learn to accept the food and to develop the muscle sequences and practices necessary for this to occur naturally. Don’t worry, Parents. We can help improve your baby’s ability to thrive. These littlest ones are, after all, such a blessing.
Our scientists and the CDC have identified the age of 2 years as a milestone for development of certain skills. By this age, kids should show early language and receptive language skills, and basic communication skills. They should be able to respond to simple questions by pointing, put two or more words together for more complex meaning, point to at least two body parts when asked to identify, and use more advanced gestures such as nodding yes. Cognitively, they should be able to use two hands for a task, such as holding a container and removing the lid; use buttons and switches on toys; and play with multiple toys together, such as putting toy food on a toy plate.
The age identified for having developed these skills is 2 years old. However, it is important to remember that not all kids develop at the same pace, so it’s probably not necessary to rush in to our offices the day after your child turns 2 if not all of these areas are yet mastered before the birthday cake is gone. At the same time, the young child should demonstrate mastery in each of these areas around the age of 2. So if it’s a couple of months after your child turns 2 and these milestones are not all yet met, it may be a good idea to come in for an assessment to ensure there are no developmental delays.
We see a lot of early language intervention, delayed speech, unclear speech, and children not making their milestones in this age group.
Older kids have different challenges and may need speech therapy. School-aged children tend to struggle more with articulation and pronunciation. Our language pathologists work closely with the child to treat the child in accordance with the specific child’s needs.
Among young children and adolescents, we typically see articulation errors, such as lisps, pronunciation in English of certain sounds l, th, r, and s, and other phonological impairments. A stutter is also common. At this age, these challenges may indicate a speech disorder, language disorder, or fluency disorder. The disorder affects not only the child’s speech, but ekes into overall academic success.
Pronunciation is closely tied to reading and overall academic success because when we read, we pronounce the words silently in our minds. If we don’t pronounce the word properly, we don’t understand the word, so we don’t understand the larger meaning of the sentence or the larger idea of the reading passage. As a result, articulation errors and phonological impairments lead to spelling difficulties, reading comprehension difficulty, grammatical impairments, and difficulty with language development overall. Thus, obtaining skill help for pronunciation also indirectly improves the child’s reading and writing as well.
Because these skills are related to a child’s confidence and that, in turn, manifests in the child’s interactions with others, the child benefits from improved social skills as well when speech skills are strengthened.
