Parents of young children with autism often report delayed speech as their first concern, but speech delay is not specific to autism. Delayed speech is also present in young children with global developmental delay caused by intellectual disability and those with severe to profound hearing loss.

Language is what makes us human. It is how people communicate. By learning a language, it means you have mastered a complex system of words, structure, and grammar to effectively communicate with others. Of course, not all communication is through language, but mastering a language certainly helps speed up the process.

A significant speech and language impairment is a sufficiently severe disability to qualify for DLA.

By identifying problems early on and taking simple, effective steps that are focused on fostering understanding and communication, teachers and SENCos can help to draw children out of the prison of language that they inhabit, and provide them with a foundation on which speech therapists can build further language …

Some causes of speech and language disorders include hearing loss, neurological disorders, brain injury, intellectual disabilities, drug abuse, physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate, and vocal abuse or misuse.

A speech and language delay is when a child isn’t developing speech and language at an expected rate. It’s a common developmental problem that affects as many as 10% of preschool children.

Simple speech delays are sometimes temporary. They may resolve on their own or with a little extra help from family. It’s important to encourage your child to “talk” to you with gestures or sounds and for you to spend lots of time playing with, reading to, and talking with your infant or toddler.

Many kids with speech delays have oral–motor problems. These happen when there’s a problem in the areas of the brain responsible for speech. This makes it hard to coordinate the lips, tongue, and jaw to make speech sounds. These kids also might have other oral-motor problems, such as feeding problems.

People may not understand the child in everyday situations. For most children, the cause of the speech sound disorder is unknown. Other speech sound disorders can be linked to things such as a cleft palate, problems with the teeth, hearing loss, or difficulty controlling the movements of the mouth.

Following are 10 signs that your child has a speech disorder and needs speech therapy:

1. Your child stutters.
2. Your child has an inconsistent voice quality.
3. Your child doesn’t interact with other children.
4. Your child doesn’t babble.
5. Your child shows speech inconsistency.

Autism symptoms in a 3-year-old

• doesn’t respond to name.
• avoids eye contact.
• prefers playing alone to playing with others.
• doesn’t share with others, even with guidance.
• doesn’t understand how to take turns.
• isn’t interested in interacting or socializing with others.
• doesn’t like or avoids physical contact with others.

6 Signs Your Child Might Need Pediatric Speech Therapy

1. Not babbling at age 4-7 months. A baby who seems strangely quiet and isn’t experimenting with sounds through babbling could be showing signs of a language disorder, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
2. Issues with verbal requests.
3. Not speaking in sentences.
4. Trouble making certain sounds.

By 2 years old, most toddlers will say 50 words or more, use phrases, and be able to put together two-word sentences. No matter when they say their first words, it’s a sure bet they are already understanding much of what is said to them before that.

In general, a speech-language pathologist has: Graduated with a master’s degree or a doctoral degree from a speech-language pathology program accredited by the Council on Academic Accreditation of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.