January 31, 2025

What Age Should a Child Start Talking Clearly: When Parents Need to Be Concerned

January 31, 2025

What Age Should a Child Start Talking Clearly: When Parents Need to Be Concerned

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What Age Should a Child Start Talking Clearly: When Parents Need to Be Concerned
When learning to pronounce new sounds, it's common for children to make a few mistakes

Here at Precision Speech Therapy, we get a lot of questions. The most common question is, “What age should a child start talking clearly?”

When learning to pronounce new sounds, it’s common for children to make a few mistakes.

Additionally, there are age ranges at which kids should be able to speak each sound correctly. Even though every child learns differently, it’s still beneficial to keep an eye on their development as they pass milestones linked to speaking.

Ensuring children are reasonably literate at the appropriate age allows them to benefit much from early education and develop social skills.

In this post, we’ll examine the broad speech clarity benchmarks that kids should aim for at specific ages and what to do in situations where kids require more assistance. However, before we get started, it will be helpful to quickly recap the many types of speech impairments.

Types of Speech Disorders

Children's speech clarity issues can arise for various reasonsChildren’s speech clarity issues can arise for various reasons, whether they’re simply part of the learning process or caused by a more serious issue such as hearing loss. Whatever the underlying reason, we can classify speech issues as delays or disorders.

A speech delay is when mistakes persist past an appropriate age and isn’t necessarily a cause for concern. However, therapy is required if these mistakes are corrected by six years of age.

A speech disorder is of greater concern because it indicates that the kid is either experiencing physical difficulties producing the sound or is replacing or deleting sounds in a way that deviates from typical developmental processes.

When to be Concerned: What Age Should a Child Start Talking Clearly?

Those familiar with the child or caregivers are the best people to spot the early indicators of speech difficulties. Extra support should be considered if a kid is extremely difficult for caretakers to understand, appears to be having difficulty making noises, or is aware that others cannot comprehend what they are saying. The range of simplified speech clarity milestones listed below might be used as a starting point to gauge your child’s progress, even though they are merely approximate:

Before 12 Months

Babies babble when they're around the age of 6 months oldBabies babble when they’re around the age of 6 months old. Babies won’t pronounce their official first words for about a year, but they can communicate with you from birth by gurgling, sighing, and crying. This happens when babies start to baby talk and toy with language sounds like “ma-ma” and “da-da.”

Most infants babble until they turn one year old. At this point, cooing is the first step in speech development. Your infant is only now learning to say more than cry. Your infant will employ a variety of voice tones and string sounds together to communicate.

Before 12 months, babies should be paying interest and attention to sounds around them and starting to recognize the names of common objects. If your baby does not watch intently or react to sounds, this might indicate speech delays or problems.

Babies undergo hearing tests in the initial days following birth. This test helps identify those who have problems with their sense of hearing and also reveals if the child might have delayed speech. Earlier detection can help you know what to do next. However, recurring ear infections at this stage can also influence your child’s hearing ability, and this might lead to language delays.

12 to 18 Months

Babies should be able to make various speech sounds at this age. They start to mimic the noises and words they hear around them. They should also be able to comprehend and follow basic one-step directions given to them by others in their immediate vicinity. Until the eighteenth month, most toddlers can speak in a babble of roughly twenty words.

Your infant should now be able to point to several bodily parts, such as the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. You can anticipate that they will name every bodily part besides pointing. However, it’s a reality that many children will first point well before they can verbalize them. Usually, the nouns around them are children’s first few words at this stage.

18 to 24  Months

Around these months, babies can begin combining two or three words to form rudimentary phrases. Before they turn two years old, most kids can speak between twenty and fifty words. They can recognize common objects around them, point to objects when asked, and comply with basic two-step orders.

At this age, your child is combining previously taught words, so don’t expect them to express themselves with proper grammar. In addition, children at this stage can also point at pictures in a book and listen to storybooks with pictures.

What Age Should a Child Start Talking Clearly

2 to 3 Years of Age

This stage sees a huge leap in speech development. Most parents are astonished when babies start forming simple sentences. They can now express their ideas out loud and point to desired things. At this age, children need to gain an understanding of what is going on around them.

Furthermore, they must comprehend basic descriptive concepts and instructions already. But, you should consult your doctor if your child hasn’t pronounced their first word by the time they are two years old and only appears to grasp up to fifty words. These issues can be resolved if possible issues are identified early on.

3 to 4 Years of Age

You should already understand about 75% of what your three-year-old kids say. By age four, your child must be understood by others who know them. At this time, most children must have started their schooling already, and it’s a must that their speech is relatively clear. At this point, kids also self-correct when they hear words spoken correctly.

If caregivers find it hard to understand a child despite their best attempts, it is appropriate to seek the assistance of a speech-language pathologist

Your baby’s vocabulary is greatly improved at this point. You can’t expect 100% excellence in language skills for their speech and language development at 36 months. The general guideline for babies indicates that the child should be able to form sentences with at least three or four words. This development often occurs between the ages of 36 and 47 months. As a result, you should anticipate that kids ages 3 to 4 will begin to speak clearly.

Getting Professional Support

If caregivers find it hard to understand a child despite their best attempts, it is appropriate to seek the help of a speech-language pathologist (SLT).

SLTs specialize in assessing and treating speech clarity issues and will offer advice relevant to your child and situation. The SLT will ask you about your situation, assess your kid’s speech, and – based on the data obtained – give you reassurance and guidance specific to your situation and child.

After that, you and the therapist can decide whether to start speech-language therapy sessions if necessary or to keep an eye out for indicators of usual growth.

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© 2024, Precision Speech Therapy. All Rights Reserved.

Forney Medical Plaza Building 2, 757 E U.S. Highway 80, Suite 160, Room A, Forney, Texas 75126
© 2024, Precision Speech Therapy. All Rights Reserved.

Forney Medical Plaza Building 2, 757 E U.S. Highway 80, Suite 160, Room A, Forney, Texas 75126