Speech

Speech is the ability to produce the sounds that form words. Language is the words that your child understands and uses as well as how he uses them. By 12-18 months, our children often say their first words with meaning. For example, your child saying “Mama”, when he’s calling for his dad. In their second year, your toddler’s vocabulary continues to grow, and they start to put two words together into short sentences. In their third year, our students learn to speak in longer, more complex sentences. They learn to play and talk at the same time.

Speech is key when it comes to understanding and connecting for your child. There are so many parents looking for guidance on the topic of speech. While it is important to remember that every child develops speech differently, we also recognize it is becoming a growing area of concern to parents, teachers and even pediatricians. At Lake Dow Learning Academy, we start each child from where they are. This helps us start a baseline foundation.

Before language and communication can emerge, there are a few building blocks that need to be established. Those building blocks are eye contact and joint attention. Eye contact is one of the first things we try to establish in therapy with children who have difficulty with language and social skills. Not only does eye contact acknowledge the other person, it lets them know you are ready to communicate with them. Eye contact is essentially a precursor to communication.

Joint attention is another very important precursor for language to begin developing. Joint attention is the ability of a child to look or pay attention to the same thing as you are (joining your attention together on the same item). It is the ability for the child to respond appropriately when you point at a picture and say "Look!"