Milestones of speech, language and communication development: 6+ years

Growing from a baby to a child requires achieving many milestones in language, physical, social, emotional and intellectual development. Most children develop skills in roughly the same order but the actual age a child reaches that milestone can vary considerably. Our child “Bill” has normal hearing. At the 72+ month period of development Bill is at school. His listening and attention skills are improving so he can attend and learn well. He has a big vocabulary and can articulate his thoughts and feelings well. He continues to learn new vocabulary and skills.

Speech and auditory awareness: 6+ years

Speech is error-free and adult-like.

Expressive Language and semantics (content): 6+ years

Bill’s vocabulary continues to grow and he is able to converse and argue his point of view.

Social use of Language (use and pragmatics): 6+ years

Bill comprehends subtle humour and giggles about silly things. He uses the telephone for social calls.

Bill now regularly plays games with rules and enjoys football. He will regularly argue about the rules. There is also more focus on the social aspects of play and the acceptance of the group.

Receptive language (comprehension, perceiving and understanding) and cognition: 6+ years

Bill’s understanding of the world around him increases especially as he is now attending school. He has to listen, process and learn, often only by listening to information. However, his auditory memory and processing skills are such that he does not have difficulties taking on board and storing new information.

Morphology and syntax (structure): 6+ years

Bill is now able to use passive sentence forms, e.g., “The bus was hit by the car” and he will correct his own sentence errors. He now uses mature expressions, e.g., “This is serious. Dad is allergic to cats and we have a mouse in the cellar”.

Bill argues verbally and uses more complex negation often, e.g., “I can’t get it,” or “I can’t figure it out”.

He uses mature vocabulary, e.g., “surprisingly,” “frightening,” “disappointing”.

Gross and fine motor skills: 6+ years

Bill continues to excel at certain motor tasks that involve art and sport.

For more information on child development, and activities to develop speech and language skills visit the website www.icommunicatetherapy.com. Reproduced with permission.