What should I do?
When should I seek help?
You are feeling insecure about your child's speech and don't know whether it is time to seek help or not. If you live in Germany and speak another language you may be wondering if this is due to learning German, right? You may think, whether you should wait a little longer, until your child has a better understanding of both languages. If your child is multilingual, you may even be thinking about a learning overload with different sounds of various languages.
These insecurities and questions are brought by parents and families to my professional practice for over 20 years of work as a bilingual and multilingual speech-language pathologist living outside of Brazil. I will now explain how and when you should seek professional help.
Phonological Processes:
Articulation or speech mistakes (alterations) are normal when a child is learning to articulate sounds. The alterations occur due to a lack of ability to coordinate the movements of the lips, tongue, palate, and jaw to achieve clear and correct speech. As a result of this incoordination and inability, the child simplifies the most complex movements into different forms. These alterations or substitutions in the way sounds are made are called Phonological Processes. For example, a common process in English occurs when a child reduces a consonant cluster as "plane" for "pane"; or when a child deletes a syllable from a word, instead of speaking "banana" he speaks "nana".
The phonological processes are called differently according to the characteristics of the substitutions or alterations. Below I describe some of the most common processes and inform you how old your child will stop these processes, and consequently speak correctly.
I also present a comparison of these processes in Portuguese, German, and English. This way you know what to expect in the other languages your child speaks.
*The more detailed classification of each process, as well as other processes have not been cited due to their complexity. Note that the above processes were not translated from one language to another, but rather a study was made of which process would be closest between languages. Some processes are the same and others are different between languages because the sounds and their formations to form syllables and words are different in each language.
Phonological Disorder:
Phonological processes are considered normal up to a certain age. If one or more processes persist beyond the typical age that is considered normal. It may be an indication of a phonological disorder if a child at 4 years and 6 months speaks "sell" instead of "shell".
In the case of children exposed to the learning of multiple languages, bilingual speech therapists always give a margin of 6 months beyond the expected age for the elimination of the process and the acquisition of the correct sound. However, everything must be evaluated carefully and if your child presents other deviations and difficulties, don't wait!!!
When a phonological process persists beyond the age limit, the child's speech becomes very difficult to understand. The intelligibility of their speech will be affected. Parents, teachers and playmates might not understand what a child is trying to say. Usually parents seek help for their children at this point!
Below is a tip on how to check your child's speech intelligibility.
What should I do?
Follow your intuition!
I always believe that parents have a lot of intuition about their children's development and always know when something is wrong. Listen to your heart and the voice of your intuition! Talk to a specialist you trust, which could be your child's teacher or your child's doctor.
Check your child's speech intelligibility!
You can check your child's intelligibility based on his or her age. There are several standardized scales of child development, studied by experts. According to these scales a 2-year-old child should be 50% understood by an unfamiliar listener. At the age of 3, they should be 75% understood by a stranger. Between the ages of 4 and 5, children should speak clearly and be 100% understood by unfamiliar listeners. In their speech, few phonological errors should occur.
Speech Intelligibility Expectations
Source: Pena-Brooks, Adriana, &Hedge,M.N.(2007). Assessment and treatment of articulation and phonological disorders in children (End Edition).Austin, TX:PRO-ED.
When should I seek Help?
Don't wait. Get help as soon as possible!
The sooner you seek help from a speech-language pathologist, the sooner stimulation for the reduction and elimination of phonological processes will occur. You will contribute to the processes not persevering for longer. The longer a child perseveres in a process, or the longer the child does not get correct stimulation, the longer the duration of therapy can be, and the more difficult it is.
There are many phonological processes and each child has unique changes and different combinations of them. Speech-language pathologists are the competent and authorized professionals to perform specific phonological and language evaluations.
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