The development of speech and language skills begins in infancy, even before your child uses his or her first word.
This development progresses gradually as your child grows, making noises as an infant, to picking up new words by the time your child is two.
Speech and language problems can cause your child’s development to be affected in terms of behaviour, social and academic skills. Thus, it is important to detect the cause of the problem early.

Common speech and language disorders
Speech and language problems can be divided into three categories:
Structural, neural and other related problems.
Structural
Cleft palate speech disorder
This refers to children ho are born with a cleft palate, as it is common for children with this condition to have speech problems at some point in their lives. Symptoms include: inability to make certain sounds; sounding as if he or she is “talking through their noses”; making grunting or growling sounds
Articulation disorders
These disorders are speech sound errors that do not change in different word contexts. Symptoms include: an obvious lisp; weak articulation of certain sounds beginning with the letters R, L, J and S such as “labbit” for rabbit.
Neural
Apraxia
Apraxia affects your child’s ability to plan, execute and sequence the movements of the mouth necessary for intelligible speech. Symptoms include: limited babbling as an infant; few or no words when other babies are talking by age two; poor ability to imitate sounds and words; substituting vowel and consonant sounds in words.
Development language delay
With this disorder, your child has difficulty learning or retrieving new words and putting sentences together. Symptoms include: difficulty learning verb tenses; difficulty learning word classes, difficulty learning new words and using grammar properly.
Dysarthria
A neurological speech disorder that affects a child’s muscle tone, making his speech sound slurred. Symptoms include: weak vocal quality; rapid or slow speaking rate; generally weak, mushy, garbled and imprecise speech.
Stuttering
Your child repeats individual speech sounds, usually at the beginning of words or phrases. Symptoms include: your child developing a stutter when moving from using single words and short phrases to longer sentences or when they are under pressure to speak.
Other related problems
There are also other related issues when it comes to speech and language skills problems.
Shyness
Some children are naturally shy and therefore do not do much talking, especially in the presence of a crowd. Symptoms include: not speaking at all unless necessary; reclusive and quiet; when speaking, speaks with a quiet voice; concerns from teachers who claim your child in not speaking at all.
Hearing
Having problems listening will give your child problems talking. As both senses are related, most often times someone who is deaf is also mute. Symptoms include: not forming words properly; keeps to oneself; not being able to make a full sentence properly.

What you can do
The earlier a child’s speech and language problems are identified and treated, the less likely the problem will persist or become worse. Early evaluation by a speech therapist is crucial.
As a parent, here are some general tips you can try at home:
> Spend time communicating with your child, even during infancy. Encourage imitation of sounds and gestures.
> Read to your child. Look for age-appropriate books that encourage your child to look and learn.
> Use everyday situations to reinforce your child’s speech and language abilities. For example, you can point out objects around the house and name them to help your child pick up some vocabulary and speech ability. Keep it simple.
> Baby talk at the appropriate age. It’s alright to baby talk if the child is about six months to 1 1/2 to two years as this is the level of comprehension of language. After that, speak to the child normally, with proper speech and words.

Speech and language development milestones
| Squeal - four months
| Make cooing noises - 5 1/2 months
| Say “dada” and “mama” to anyone - 10 months
| Say “dada” and “mama” to parents - 13 months
| Start to learn single words - 18 months
| Put two words together - 27 months
| Knows own name - 42 months
| Talk in full sentences - 42 months
| Name a colour - 45 months
| Define seven words - 60 months

Positive Parenting by Woo Pei Jun / The Star