Speech Sound Development
The following is a list of when 75% of children have mastered speech sounds. (Photo Articulation Test, 1969, Pendergast et al, and Stoel-Gammon, 1985.)
Limited consonant sound use results in unintelligible speech and often indicates a motor speech disorder (apraxia) or phonological disorder. Check out these norms and the list of “red flags” which indicate that speech therapy is likely needed to help your child learn to be understood.
By 18 months -
Child produces 3 to 6 different consonant sounds with each child having a little different consonant inventory.
By 24 months –
Initial Sounds - /p, b, m, t, n, d, h, k, g/
Final Sounds - /p, m, n/
Produces Most Vowel Sounds Correctly and at least 6-8 different consonant sounds.
By 28 months –
Initial Sounds – /d, f/ and “y”
Final Sounds - /s, d, k, f/ and “ng”
By 32 months –
Initial Sounds - /w/
Final Sounds - /t, b, r/
By 36 months –
Initial Sounds - /s/
Final Sounds - /l, g/ and “er” endings
Child uses at least 9-12 different consonant sounds.
By 40 months –
Initial Sounds - /l, r/
Some consonant blends – bl, br, tr
Final Sounds – /v/ and “sh”
By 44 months –
Initial Sounds – “sh” and “ch” and fl
Final Sounds – “ch”
By 48 months –
Initial – sp, st, kl
After 48 months –
Initial - /z, v/ and “j”and th”
Final - /z/ and “th” and “j”
RED FLAGS for CHILD’S ARTICULATION SKILLS that warrant a referral to a speech-language pathologist for evaluation. (Stoel-Gammon 1994).
Numerous Vowel Errors -
Most children have mastered nearly all vowel sounds by age 2. Some errors are still acceptable are age 2, but by age 3, all vowels be mastered (with exception of /r/ vowels).
Widespread Deletion of Initial Consonants
By 2 a child should use at least 3 to 4 different consonant sounds at the beginnings of words.
By 3 a child should have a large repertoire of initial consonants.
Substitution of Back Consonants /k/ and /g/ or /h/ for a variety of Consonants
This is atypical phonological development and should be targeted even in very young children.
Deletion of Final Consonants after age 3
By 24 months in language delayed children some final consonant deletions are expected, but by 36 months, all children should be producing words with ending consonant sounds.
Again there is variation in individual children, but for the most part, parents should understand close to all of what a child says by age 3, and strangers should understand all of what a child says by age 4, even if errors are still present.
For more information about how to treat speech sound disorders, check out my DVD Teach Me To Talk with Apraxia and Phonological Disorders. Here’s the link -
Comment by Anna on 6 October 2009:
My daughter just turned 3 on 10-2-09 and has been exposed to three different languages. English, arabic and spanish. Her speech in English is unclear at times. One speech therapist told me she has articulation disorder and the other said phonological disorder. Which of your DVD will help me work with her and would she out grow this with Speech therapy two hours a week. Please tell me what you think I can do to help her.
Comment by Laura on 7 October 2009:
Anna - My new DVD Teach Me To Talk with Apraxia and Phonological Disorder is the one you need since it will teach you ways to work on speech sounds at home. She should make significant progress with therapy AND with you helping her at home, so try not to worry!! But don’t let that stop you from doing all you can to help her! Good luck!! Laura
Comment by Jen on 19 November 2009:
My 12 month old is starting to talk and has about 10 words in her vocabulary. Consonants include m, b, d, h, n. Here’s my concern. Recently, she picked up the word “comb” but she deletes the initial consonant so that it sounds like “om.” She also tried to repeat the word “cow” and it came out as “ow.” Similarly, when she says the word “hot” she is inconsistent with the “h” sound. Sometimes it’s present, other times it is not.
She has never made any /g/ or /k/ sounds, not even as a younger infant during the cooing and babbling stages. She does use initial consonant sounds in words like mama, dada, bubbles (sounds like bubu), baby, pop (sounds like bop).
I realize she’s very young still, but I’m worried because most of reading I’ve done indicates that initial consonant deletion is atypical. Please tell me what you think. Thank you.
Comment by Laura on 20 November 2009:
Jen - I wouldn’t be concerned AT ALL about her. Sometimes /g/ and /k/ don’t emerge until later. By 2 toddlers should use 6-8 consonants consistently in words, and she’s already doing that. Don’t worry and keep up the good work you’re obviously doing with her!! Laura
Comment by Debbie on 22 January 2010:
My daughter (a twin - her brother’s speech is extremely advanced) is 33.5 months old and does not use s, f, k, or g sounds, except plural s. She can make all the sounds in isolation, but in speech she substitutes a “d” sound. About once a day she asks for something I just can’t understand. In all other ways, she’s well ahead of normal.
I’ve worked hard with her the last few weeks, just on f and s. She can now do s+consonant combinations (”snow”), but not s+vowel or any f’s. (For example, “flower” is “fff-dower” and “see” is “sss-dee.” “Skateboard” has improved to “sss-dateboard.”)
Where we live now, it would be hard for me to get her to & from therapy. We’ll move to a better place shortly after she turns 4, but I don’t want to wait if she needs help now. What would you recommend?
Comment by Laura on 22 January 2010:
Debbie - All of the sounds you listed are later consonants, meaning they are not among the first to develop. It’s perfectly fine for her to still use substitutions for those sounds at her age. Remember that the list above is when 75% of children have mastered the sounds, so there’s still room for a child to not have acquired a sound yet, but still be developing “normally.”
I have written an article with some sound cues for consonants, but when I looked for it for another mom today, I discovered it’s not there. I plan to repost it over the weekend so check back for “hints” for how to target some of those sounds.
Since it would be hard to get to and from therapy right now, try working with her at home. In my opinion, it’s not going to hurt her to wait. It also sounds like that she’ right on the verge of mastering some of those sounds too by how you’ve described her pronunciation of words. Keep at it! It sounds like you’re doing fine with her, and if she doesn’t get it with “mommy therapy” you can always do that after you move.
Thanks for the question!! Laura
Comment by Toni on 3 February 2010:
Dear Laura,
My daughter is almost 15 months and seems to be adding new words every week. I was upset at first because many/most of her words contain what I thought were “errors,” but after doing LOTS of reading (including your blog) I’ve come to realize that her errors fit under typical phonological processes. She’s “big” on final consonant deletion, voicing, and fronting. She will sometimes combine these processes as well so that a word like “key” comes out as “dee” (fronting with voicing…I believe??)
Recently, however, I’ve noticed another pattern and I’d like your help in determining whether or not she is using a phonological process or truly making a non-developmental error. If I ask her to say the word “so” she says “do” which means that she is “stopping” the /s/. However, if I then ask her to say the word “soap” she says “bo.” Same thing for the words key and keep. “Key” becomes “dee” (as I mentioned above) but “keep” becomes “bee.”
I am sick with worry over this and am literally losing sleep thinking that she is reversing sounds, but when I look at the list of typical phonological processes, I see that there is something called consonant harmony whereby the pronunciation of a whole word is influenced by the presence of a particular sound in the word. Is THIS what she is doing (along with final consonant deletion) or IS she reversing sounds? She says “up” and “no” and “on” perfectly, if that means anything.
As I said, I am sick over the thought that she may have a REAL problem. Please help. I am actually crying right now, I’m so worried about her.
Comment by Laura on 3 February 2010:
Toni - Oh my goodness! I wish I could see you in person to help you calm down! Your daughter is very, very, very young and you have already done waaaaay more analysis on her than even the most cautious speech-language pathologist would do for her at this age. I don’t want to minimize your concern, but to be overly worried about her articulation at this point is very premature.
Language - that is adding new words - is much more important at this point than speech sound errors. Many, many toddlers (including all 3 of my own children!) have multiple errors in their initial vocabularies. Just keep modeling words correctly for her without over-correcting her so that she doesn’t become frustrated. Don’t put pressure on her either because this could actually make it worse for her, and you certainly don’t want her to feel like her mommy doesn’t think she’s absolutely wonderful and isn’t correcting every single word that comes out of her little mouth. At this age, rewarding her effort and her LANGUAGE is much, much more important than how she sounds.
If she’s still making lots of errors after 2 that aren’t typical, see an SLP at that point. Until then, celebrate her language which seems to be blossoming. Pat yourself on the back too because you’re definitely doing something right! Laura
Comment by Corrin on 6 February 2010:
I am a Early Intervention SLP who is needing help with a set of twins on my caseload. They will turn 3 years old on 4-2-10. I have never encountered an experience like theirs. They have their own little language & are able to understand each other. Their big sister is 4 years old & is now able to understand them as well. Their mother just stated today - she doesn’t understand why they say words but no one can understand them. They substitute the consonant /h/ for almost everything.
Here are some examples:
boat - /h??/
fish- /hI/
flower-/ha?h/
gum-/h?/
leaf-/hi/
pop-/hap/
spoon-/hun/ one says /hu/
thumb-/h?/
nose-/h??/
sock-/ha/
swimming-/hhi/
teeth/hi/
chair-/h?/
Words correctly produced: help, ball, bubble, pop
They are soooo incredibly unintelligible & just curious if you could offer any advice. Anything would be greatly appreciated.
Comment by Laura on 7 February 2010:
Corrin - This is a hard one! Using /h/ as a substitution for consonants is atypical, but I have occasionally seen it in children on my caseload, so it’s not unheard of.
It’s great that they have an initial /b/ and /p/ for a couple of words, so build on this by targeting bilabials for words in play. Other than the h/t in teeth, h/b in boat, and h/n in nose, all of the other words you mentioned begin with later-developing consonants, so while /h/ isn’t a typical substitution, it’s not as “severe” as the substitution for the /t, h, b/ since they are early-developing consonants.
Have you tried some early consonant sound cues too - /p/ is the popper sound, /t/ is your tippy/tapper sound etc….? Associate them with the sound’s properties. David Hammer, an apraxia expert, recommends this method, and it is very successful with toddlers. There’s an article about these here on the site, but you can SEE these kinds of cues in my DVD Teach Me To Talk with Apraxia and Phonological Disorders, as well as other cues that work to target intelligibility in toddlers.
Other ideas - have you tried teaching them signs to pair with key words so it helps mom (and everyone else!) with intelligibility? Sometimes this slows kids down long enough for articulation to improve, or at least get closer to the target.
Hope these ideas can be of some help for your last couple of months of treatment!! Laura
Comment by Katherine on 23 February 2010:
Hi Laura,
I’m an EI SLP in her CFY-year (yay done with school!). I have a question about a kiddo on my caseload. He’s 2;7 (or around that, international adoption so who knows for sure!). We’ve been working very hard on language development and he can now use 2 and 3 word phrases fairly consistently, although he . The problem is he is still EXTREMELY jargon-y, especially in new situations or with new people. He will string together entire paragraphs of sounds while using in my estimation about 2-3 actual words. To be on the safe side, I went ahead and did an artic test to see if we were just missing a lot of sounds, he scored 83 so just outside of wnl, and he is so young I really wasn’t overly concerned. The words he has are pretty consistent in production, so apraxia wasn’t really on my radar, but now I’m starting to wonder if there is something that I’m missing. Do you think that beginning to target sound production is appropriate?
Thank you!
Comment by Laura on 23 February 2010:
Katherine - I have really come to believe that when a child this old is still using jargon that there’s almost always an underlying receptive/processing problem. So what does this mean for treatment? Keep working on making sure he is learning to understand new words and concepts so that he has the vocabulary base to pull from and can use real words to form sentences. I still believe that some kids use jargon as an in-between step from single words to phrases, but I now don’t just look at this as purely an expressive language issue. Since his artic test scores were so good, I don’t think I’d target artic yet. Keep working on language since it really may be a processing or even a word retrieval issue.
What I recommend parents do for jargon is to use breakdowns/build-ups. Pick out what you think the child tried to say (the breakdown part), and model that with a key word or two. Encourage him/her to imitate that word or two-word phrase. Then expand that key word or 2 word phrase to by a word a two to make the utterance longer, and have him repeat that too (the build-up part).
Of course I can’t see this kid and I could be wrong
But hopefully these ideas will help point you in the right direction. Laura
Comment by Lynne on 25 February 2010:
Hi there!
I have a 20 month old son who I have some concerns about. He isn’t currently using the following consonants: c,f,g,k,l,s,v,z. He also leaves the ending off of all words ending in consonants. For example, he says “baw” for ball, “daw” for dog, “ni-ni” for night-night, “duh” for done, etc. The only words he seems to say clearly are hi, bye, mama, dadda, nanny, yeah, no, wow, whoa, uh-oh, ewww, weee, boo-boo, yo-yo, bubble, bee, boo-boo,and some animals sounds (moo, neigh, baaaa, meh, hoo). Is this normal? Any tips on getting him to use more consonants? He is very active and constantly on the move. Which dvd would be best for me to purchase? Thank you so much for your time. Some people think I’m just a paranoid first time mom but I’d rather catch it sooner than later if there is a problem.
-Lynne
Comment by Jana on 25 February 2010:
Laura,
I am seeing what you wrote to Katherine about the use of jargon, and at what age range would you say is the ‘norm’ for using jargon. Jakob uses a ton of jargon, but he’s just now two. I have not really seen any proof of him having a reception problem, so that would mean a retrieval problem.
Thanks,
Comment by Lynne on 1 March 2010:
Laura,
It’s me again
Sorry to bother you, but you never responded to my comment. I was hoping for some suggestions/help. I also wanted to know which dvd would be the best for me to purchase. I posted a comment on February 25 about my son not using many consonants and leaving off the endings of words.
Thanks,
Lynne
Comment by Laura on 1 March 2010:
Sorry Lynne! I totally overlooked your comment! ALL of the consonants you listed are later developing consonants, so no need at all to be worried about these sounds yet. It’s also okay that he’s not using final sounds yet since many children can’t do this until 2 1/2 to 3. His vocabulary looks fine for his age too.
If you want to be proactive I’d recommend Teach Me To Talk since it outlines expressive language strategies. If he doesn’t add more consonants by 2 1/2 then you may want to take a look at the Apraxia/Phonological Disorders one and/or have him formally evaluated so someone besides me can tell you not to worry
Laura
Comment by Lynne on 2 March 2010:
Laura,
Thank you for responding:) I will definitely consider the Teach Me to Talk dvd. I forgot to mention in the previous email that he drinks out of his straw cups from the side of his mouth instead of the center of his mouth. Is this something to be concerned about?