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Our speech language therapist discusses why your 2 or 3 year old may have speech & language and social skills difficulties. She also shares what speech therapy is about.

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2 or 3 year old is when most children's speech and language is taking off. They are starting to learn about using new words, longer sentences and asking questions. Therefore, when a parent notices the child is not interacting with others or having speech, they are usually puzzled.

Most of the time, we don't teach children how to talk. Just like we don't teach them how to walk, we provide opportunities for them to walk, so they naturally pick up walking.

However, when a child is having difficulties, we do have to teach them differently. It's just like teaching them to play a piano and riding a bicycle, we have to take them step by step with guidance, allowing them opportunities to try and taking them through the process gradually.

There are two main categories of factors affecting childen's speech development:

1. The cognitive aspect: the child need to know that each object has a label, when people talk to him he should respond.

2. The physical aspect: oral motor control (how the child moves his tongue, and/or lips).

When children have speech difficulties, what is often just a small step for their peers maybe a big step for them. For example when the teacher is teaching new words such as "Giraffe" and "Rhinoceros".

In speech and language therapy, we diagnose the area of difficulty and break it up from a big step to many small intermediate achievable steps. It is absolutely important for parents to remember that the process could take a long time and they have to be patient.

You can check out https://LeoMagan.com/Blog/ now for videos and information about factors affecting children's speech and language development.

Have fun and bond with your child in this learning process.

Do you like this video? Tell us about your experience and share what you would like to know to help your child.