Why Your Toddler Might Not Need Speech Therapy If He Or She Isn't Speaking Well

A lot of parents worry about the speech of their children when their kids are not meeting the milestones doctors recommend during regular checkups. For example, by the age of two, a child should start speaking in two-word sentences. When a child is not doing this, the parent might want to consider having the child evaluated by a speech therapist. If you have a child that is not speaking as well as he or she should be, you should not be surprised if the therapist does not recommend speech therapy at this time.

How Therapists Evaluate Toddlers

If you are concerned about your child's speech development and decide to get him or her evaluated, you will need to meet with a speech therapist. The therapist will complete a lot of different activities while completing the evaluation, and you may be surprised to find out that the therapist bases the recommendations on more than just the words the child is saying.

In fact, therapists base speech development on several things. The words the child says is one factor that plays a role in this, but the child's cognitive development is another important factor. The third factor is the way the child acts socially. With the combination of these three factors, a therapist can determine if the child needs speech therapy or not.

Why All Three Factors Matter

As a parent, you should understand that every child's speech develops at a different pace. The milestones used for speech development are just averages, and some kids simply do not speak at the same pace as other children.

The way a child's brain works is the cognitive development part that therapists evaluate, and this part of the evaluation is almost more important than the amount of words the child says. If the child's brain is working properly but the child is not speaking as many words as needed, the therapist may suggest waiting a while to do therapy.

As long as the child's brain is thinking the way it should be at this time, the child's speech is not really that important. This is why a lot of children will not need speech therapy even if they are not speaking as well as other kids. By giving these kids a little more time, their speech will usually catch up with their brains.

The way the child acts socially can also reveal how well the child's brain is working, and that is why therapists consider this when evaluating kids.

If you think your child is not speaking as well as he or she should be, you can get the child evaluated by contacting a speech therapy clinic like Frisco Feeding & Speech Therapy for more information and assistance.