Cognitive development in your child's early years is absolutely crucial to their overall development and will have a direct contribution to their future success. In particular, the development of speech and ability to display language is extremely important. Your child's ability to speak will help them to make friends in school as well answer questions within the class and develop themselves academically.
It is common knowledge that every child develops at their own rate. Some children will learn how to speak significantly faster than others, whereas others may be slower to develop. Each child will learn in their own unique way. As a result, it's difficult for parents to determine whether or not their child is in need to preschool language therapy, or if they are just slow learners. Here are some of the things your child should be able to do before the age of 4:
At the age of 2-3, your child should have a word for nearly everything. Even if the word is not always correct, they should have one.
Your child should be able to speak in a way that you and others can coherently understand.
Your child can produce sentences that contain four or more words.
Your child can answer simple 'who, what where, why' questions.
Can name an object that they are looking for or want.
Uses k, g, f, t, d, and n sounds
While every child develops at their own rate, it's important that they can interact vocally in a normal way before preschool. Without the ability to do so, they may struggle both academically and socially as they are unable to interact with others.
If you believe your child is having difficulties developing language, it is important to look into therapy sooner rather than later. Early therapy is important for reasons including:
Decreases frustration. In turn, this may reduce behavioural problems.
Prevent problems from getting worse. Communication is an essential part of life. You want to ensure that your child will be able to communicate effectively with others when they grow back in different social settings.
Prepare your child for school.
Boost your child's self-esteem and confidence in their communication abilities.
Assessment:
Our initial session will be an assessment designed for your child. Our assessments have the objective of understanding the severity of your child's language problems. Our analysis will help us grasp an understanding of what they are struggling with as well as what their current strengths are. By doing this, we can use their strengths in later sessions to improve their weaknesses.
It is important to note that this session is designed to generate as much understanding of your child's symptoms as possible. There are no 'correct' or 'incorrect' answers.
Consultation:
Our consultation session will help you to better understand your child's language difficulties, why they occur and what you can do to help them. We will provide you with a range of methods and tricks that can be applied at home to encourage and improve your child's cognitive development.
Therapy:
All of our therapy sessions are designed around your child. In these sessions, we will focus on developing a number of speech and language skills. Each one will be designed to encourage cognitive development at home as well as during our sessions.