What is a speech disorder?

Put simply, when a speech sound disorder is present, your child’s speech is hard to understand because they’ve either mis-learned the rules for how and when to use their sounds (phonological disorder) or haven’t learned how to correctly move their mouths to make their sounds (articulation disorder).

When children do not resolve these errors by an expected age of development, they may have an articulation or phonological disorder (or both) that requires specialized treatment.

Keep reading for more details on articulation and and phonological impairments:

“Articulation” refers to how we use our “articulators” (tongue, lips, teeth, etc.) to actually make sounds that we combine into words. Categories of articulation errors include distortions (using a non-typical sound for a typical sound, like a lisp), substitutions (using one typical sound in place of another - “love” sounds like “wuv”), and omissions (leaving out a sound in the word - “ball” becomes “ba”).

“Phonology” refers to an incorrect use of sounds or a pattern of errors across words. Common examples include fronting (“kitty cat” becomes “titty tat”) and cluster reduction (“snake” becomes “nake”).

If you notice these errors in your child’s speech or it is hard to understand them, I recommend reaching out to a speech therapist for a speech screening. The therapist will be able to tell you whether they are developing typically or if the errors may be the result of a speech sound impairment and recommends further evaluation.