Does Your Child…

Early Communication Milestones

• Have limited cooing, babbling, or sound play in the first year?
• Not yet combine sounds into simple syllables like “ba”, “da”, or “ma”?
• Have few or no early words by 12–18 months?
• Struggle to imitate simple sounds, gestures, or facial expressions?
• Use little pointing, gesturing, or showing of objects to share attention?
  

Speech Clarity and Sound Development (Speech Sound Disorders)

• Substitute, leave off, or change sounds, making it hard for people to understand what is being said?
• Delete beginning, middle, or ending sounds — or even entire syllables — from words?
• Seem harder to understand compared to other children their age?
• Show frustration because others don’t understand them?
  

Signs That May Suggest Suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

• Have a history of no or limited cooing, babbling, or vocal play (quiet baby/toddler)?
• Say only a few different sounds (a limited range of consonants and vowels)?
• Struggle with or resist imitating sounds, gestures, and/or facial expressions? Or, if they do imitate, do the words sound clearer than when said on their own?
• Use mostly simple syllable shapes?
• Leave out sounds, syllables, or entire parts of words?
• Struggle more with longer or more complex words than with short, simple ones?
• Master words or sounds, then seem to lose them later?
• Say the same syllable or word differently from one production to the next?
  

Oral Myofunctional Concerns

• Have an open mouth posture, breathe with their mouth open, or have an atypical swallow or “tongue thrust”?
• Have oral/sucking habits such as digit sucking, pacifier use, or extended use of sippy cups?