Child relies on gestures, acting, and pointing over speech and language

Your child is less than 50% understandable to new adults at age 2, 75% at age 3, and 90% at age 4

Your child cannot produce multiple phonemes (sounds) even when given slow, clear models

Your child can say a sound by itself, but can’t seem to put it into words

Your child’s grammar while speaking sounds peculiar

Your child stutters on many utterances, for more than 3-6 months

Your child appears to be under stress or doing strange behaviors while speaking

Your child struggles to recognize letters and letter sounds despite adequate training and instruction

Your child is not combining words by age 2

Your child does not produce any words or word approximations by 1 year of age

Your child’s voice has a major change (not related to puberty) or is raspy/hoarse

Your child appears to not understand basic directions, or cannot follow multi-step instructions that are age-appropriate

Your child uses an abundance of filler words such as stuff, thing, or changes her sentence to avoid using certain words

Your child struggles to learn a vocabulary word despite adequate instruction and time

Your child struggles to pay attention long enough to complete tasks

A teacher is concerned about your child’s speech, reading, writing, or language skills

Your child is struggling to play with or relate to peers

Your child is having sudden changes in behaviour that aren’t age-appropriate

Your child inappropriately repeats words or phrases instead of carrying on conversation

Your child struggles to hold an age-appropriate, back-and-forth conversation

Your child has lived in an English speaking country for more than 2 years and hasn’t yet learned to carry on basic conversation, or for more than 5 years and is behind native speaking peers