May celebrates two very important occupations
that assist children and families,
Better Speech and Hearing Month, and National Mental Health Month.

May is Better Hearing and Speech Month. We would like to take this opportunity to raise awareness about communication disorders and the role of the Speech-Language Pathologist in providing treatment to assist with communication skills. Parents often wonder if their child’s speech and language skills are developing normally. The complicated foundation of language skills begins at birth. Children develop certain skills at different times as they move through early stages of learning language. On the average, children learn to read by age seven, but that is dependent upon their acquisition of a good foundation of skills.

As children grow and develop, they begin listening for different purposes and responding with words instead of sounds and gestures. Receptive language (understanding) precedes expressive language (speaking). Receptive and expressive language skills lay the foundation for future success in reading and writing. These skills develop as children have opportunities to listen to and talk with others. Children must be able to understand words before they are able to produce and use them effectively.

The following is a list of milestones that children learn and begin to develop their language skills. Keep in mind that children vary in how and when they develop and learn these skills. These are not in a concrete order.

From birth to age 3 most babies and toddlers become able to:

• Make cooing, babbling sounds in the crib which gives way to enjoying rhyming and nonsense word games with a parent or caregiver
• Play along in games such as peekaboo and pat-a-cake
• Respond to gestures and facial expressions
• Associate words they hear frequently with what the words mean
• Imitate the tones, rhythms, and sounds that adults use when talking
• Handle objects such as board books and alphabet blocks in their play
• Recognize certain books by their covers
• Pretend to read books
• Understand how to handle a book
• Share books with an adult as a routine part of life
• Name some objects in a book
• Talk about characters in books
• Look at pictures in books and realize they are symbols of real things
• Listen attentively to stories
• Begin paying attention to specific print such as first letters and their names

From ages 3 to 4 most preschoolers become able to:

• Enjoy listening to and talking about storybooks
• Understand that print carries a message
• Make attempts to read and write
• Identify familiar signs and label