What Did You Say? How To Monitor Your Toddler’s Language Development
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Anyone else able to decipher what their kids say? It truly is a super power that every parent has. Especially during the language devleopment phase where words and phonics group themselves together. Knowing when to seek resources such as speech therapy can be overwhelming, but necessary.
As much as the language develop phase of my own children’s lives makes me laugh, it can be worrisome. I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I can easily worry. I’m convinced it comes with the territory of parenthood. Parenting is just a series of mental questions hoping your kid is doing well.
Daily I ask myself how are my kids meeting their developmental milestones? Is their pace too fast or too slow? Language was always at the top of my list in monitoring and seeking support when necessary.
Navigating developmental speech
“He should be speaking a bit clearer by now, I want you to watch that.”
I found myself feeling the same sinking emotions I had with my first son who seemed a bit behind in his speech. The challenge was what were the next steps. What potential resources would be available for him that were effective? I had noticed that our son struggled to enunciate and regularly sounded unclear.
I will be honest the stigma of something being “wrong” caused me to think of a myriad of disorders. However, early intervention and support is key to progress. So if you’re feeling this way, I get it – but do not stay there.
Understanding where our son he should be and where he could be helped piece our expectations and what was best for him. It was tremendously relieving to know that there were tools and interventions available to help him in this area.
Effective Speech Therapy Interventions
Research states that approximately one in 12 children between the ages of 3–17 has had a disorder related to voice, speech, language or swallowing in the past 12 months. Also that more than half of them receive intervention, according to findings from the CDC along with the NIDCD here in the United States.
Understanding that these tools and support are not as uncommon as we think, it’s important to locate effective specialists. It’s exciting to know that in the Atlanta area there is one in particular.
Talk About Therapy – Speech Therapy offers services like tongue tie and lip tie intervention, speech therapy for toddlers and kids, pediatric feeding in Atlanta, and more.
Talk About Therapy support and more!
Talk About Therapy provides intuitive, effective and sustainable therapy to their patients and their families. With this amazing approach their goal is to improve the patient’s feeding and communication skills.
The team prides themselves in treating each family with above and beyond support. Talk About Therapy’s philosophy is to help their patients and families build a strong functional foundation towards communication and feeding, and slowly build upon that foundation to create lasting results.
Talk About Therapy – Speech Therapy provide services such as pediatric feeding therapy; feeding therapy for babies; speech therapy for kids; speech therapy for toddlers; pediatric intensive feeding programs; pre- and post- frenectomy tongue procedure, or frenulectomy, tongue tie and lip tie therapy and advisement; and specialized services such as providing feeding therapy for Autism, as well as addressing common breastfeeding problems, all in our clinic or online through the convenience of teletherapy.
Signs to seek intervention
As you can see there are far more reasons to utilize speech therapy interventions. When we walked down the road of support for our second son, I had no idea therapy interventions covered a myriad of sources.
It can be more than just speech delays that require support. As you navigate your own child’s developmental journey be on the look out for these potential signs to seek support:
If your child has difficulty with the following:
- Being understood by adults or their peers?
- Engaging and interacting with other children?
- Developing imaginative pretend-play scenarios and schemes?
- Producing or imitating speech sounds?
- Understanding/following directions?
- Expressing their thoughts, wants, and needs without frustration?
If you’re noticing these behaviors as we did, I encourage you to contact the Talk About Therapy team here.
The time frame and level of support for intervention is tailored to the needs of your child. When support is necessary, don’t be afraid to start the journey. I am so grateful we didn’t allow our stigmas to keep us from seeking the support we needed.