Early Intervention Steps for Speech and Language Development

Why is early intervention important for speech and language?
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Why is early intervention important for speech and language?
Summary
The blog post emphasizes the significance of early intervention for speech and language development.
It highlights the impact of early intervention on improving communication skills and overall language abilities in children.
The article discusses the benefits of identifying and addressing speech and language difficulties at an early stage, and it emphasizes the role of speech therapists in providing timely interventions.
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Why is early intervention important for speech and language?
As a parent, you may find yourself concerned about your child’s development when the time comes for reaching major milestones.
All kids develop on their own timelines. While your oldest child began speaking at 12 months, your youngest may still be taking their time to start talking at 18 months.
If your child’s delay is cause for concern, early intervention is important for speech and language. With the help of a professional speech pathologist, your child can begin learning exercises and developing the tools to successfully begin speaking.
Here, we’re exploring early intervention and why it’s particularly important for speech and language issues. Let’s begin.
What is early intervention?
Early intervention often includes an entire team dedicated to your child’s development. This can include audiologists and speech-language pathologists. Your child’s early intervention team will assess their development and create plans to help your entire family start seeing results.
There are five key areas of developmental milestones for babies and toddlers:
Physical skills: growth, movement and motor functions
Cognitive skills: thinking and learning to problem-solving through structured play
Communication skills: talking, nonverbal gestures and facial expressions, but also listening, understanding and showing an interest in what others are saying or doing before them
Self-help skills: activities that a child learns to do on their own, like eating and getting dressed
Social-Emotional Skills: playing, connecting and interacting with others and self-regulating their emotions
Early intervention speech therapy can only help your child’s development, so why wait? The earlier intervention begins, the better the outcome.
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What is early intervention in speech pathology?
According to the CDC , early intervention is “the term used to describe the services and supports that are available to babies and young children with developmental delays and disabilities and their families.”
Early intervention speech therapy services are for speech and language developmental delays in children as soon as birth and most often under the age of 3.
In terms of speech and language, developmental milestones can range broadly. It is important to look for developmental milestones within a period of time to account for your child’s unique growth.
Rather than expecting your child to say their first word at 9 months old, it is smarter (and less anxiety-inducing) to anticipate this milestone within a range of 6-11 months.
It is when your child is not reaching speech-language milestones within expected ranges that you may seek early intervention in speech therapy.
Early intervention speech therapy goals seek to catch your child up to these milestones as much as possible.
Stanford Children’s Health outlines ranges for speech-language milestones as:
1) 0-5 months:
- Coos and giggles
- Vocalizes to express pleasure or displeasure
2) 6-11 months:
- Says their first word
- Tries to mimic sounds
- Tries to communicate by gesture
3) 12-17 months:
- Has 2-3 words to label people or objects
- Answers basic questions nonverbally
- Has a vocabulary of 4-6 words
4) 18-23 months:
- Asks for common foods by name
- Begins making animal sounds
- Begins to use pronouns
- Has a vocabulary of up to 50 words
5) 2-3 years:
- Can answer basic questions verbally
- Understands descriptions like “big” or “happy”
- Knows some spatially descriptive words like “on” or “in”
- Begins to use plurals and past tense
6) 3-4 years:
- Can group like objects together
- Can identify colours
- Uses more consonants and speech is more understandable to strangers
- Understands the use of objects
- Expresses ideas and feelings
- Repeats sentences
7) 4-5 years:
- Answers “why” questions
- Describes how to do things
- Can list items in a given category
8) 5 years:
- Understands time-related concepts (first, second, third, etc.)
- Understands rhyming
- Engages in conversation
- Uses imagination to create stories
These ranges are a helpful guide in assessing your own child’s current development.
If you feel that your child is falling behind milestone ranges at any point in their development, you should speak with their GP about receiving an assessment from a speech-language pathologist.
Children who are born with specific health conditions that may lead to a developmental delay, like certain genetic disorders, birth defects and hearing loss, are also candidates for early intervention speech therapy.
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What is the earliest age for speech therapy?
Early intervention is different for each child, depending on their development and needs as well as the needs of the family.
If you are concerned about your child’s development and find yourself asking what is the earliest age for speech therapy, then you are in luck. Speech therapy can begin as early as just after birth in some instances.
Most early intervention speech therapy occurs within the first 0-3 years. For children who were not born with specific health conditions that may lead to developmental delays, it is common for early intervention to begin at 12-18 months.
Though early intervention speech therapy is most commonly provided for children ages 0-3 years, in some cases it may be available to children up to 5 years old.
At any age, if you are concerned with your child’s development, an assessment with a speech pathologist can help you see if there are any delays in your child’s development and provide exercises to get them back on track. They can set appropriate early intervention speech therapy goals for your child to meet.
Neuroplasticity is a “term that refers to the brain’s ability to modify, change and adapt both structure and function throughout life and in response to experience.” It suggests that the brain is “plastic” or moldable, and is able to be changed by stimulation and learning experiences.
While the brain remains plastic throughout all of life, it is most plastic or moldable in the first three years of life. Early intervention services capitalise on your child’s brain’s ability to grow and change most effectively throughout those first three years of life.
What are the benefits of early intervention speech therapy?
There are many benefits of early intervention speech therapy.
A 2008 study suggested that 70-80% of late-talking toddlers will outgrow a language delay if it is an expressive delay only, which means that a significant proportion (20-30%) will not catch up to their peers.
A second study conducted in 2009 linked early language delays to later difficulties reading and writing in school.
Early intervention speech therapy can only benefit your child, even if their delays are modest. Not only will your child gain skills and make progress in their development, but you and your family will have support and guidance.
Benefi…

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