#speech development

Hey!

Basically, not totally related to that post, but when you're a baby, you hear all the different human noises around you and your brain goes "oh hey, it's going to be necessary for me to be able to make that sound at some point" and it starts to figure out the motor plans it needs to get your tongue, lips, soft palate etc to make those sounds. After a certain critical period, if your baby brain hasn't heard the sound enough, it goes "eh, we don't need to know how to do this".

So if you think about languages that require you to be able to roll your 'r' sounsd. If you haven't grown up hearing enough people around you rolling their 'r's, you quite likely won't physically be able to do it. Which means you might suck at French.

You can still learn how to understand and speak the language. But your brain doesn't learn motor patterns and languages as easily as an adult as it does when you're a kid.

Babies are sponges.

I'm not a Speech pathologist yet, but only have a few more weeks until my last exams!! Super excited!

hi, I’m a fanfic author & a speech-language pathologist. 

it’s tough to write children in-character when you don’t have a real-life frame of reference. I’ve found this website to be super helpful - it tells you about their social/emotional development, language/communication, cognition, and motor development in point form with photo or video examples (2 months-5 years). For the older ages, try this one (it focuses less on language, etc. when it gets to age 11 but they’re pretty much talking like adults and focusing on the hormonal hell of adolescence after that point).

Making sure that you have an understanding of what is developmentally appropriate is key to writing a good child character. Sometimes I come across a story that has a four-year-old with the emotional maturity of an adult or I see an 11-year-old talking like a six-year-old, and it really throws me off as a reader. 

Let’s talk about speech. You know how kids say words wrong? That also has a developmental pattern. Consult something like this (see the “common errors” column) before you start typing out speech errors that don’t make sense or have a 3 year old say sounds they shouldn’t be able to. Transcribing speech errors is a stylistic choice (e.g., “I hafta go to da bafwoom”); in general, I would only type it out like that if the kid is adorably mispronouncing a name. And if that’s your choice, just make sure the errors actually make sense!

And what if your child character doesn’t have typically-developing speech and/or language, such as a speech sound disorder, a language disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or maybe a stutter? Consult resources like ASHA before taking a guess (or send me a private message, I’d be happy to chat about it). 

If you take the time to do some research and ensure your child character is developmentally accurate, your story will flow better and your readers will be easily immersed in your story. 

you're at a birthday party. someone else's two-year-old is narrating everything like a nature documentary.

your kid hands you a cracker and grunts.

you laugh it off. but on the drive home the question comes back.

…should I be worried?

"late talker" and "language delay" aren't the same thing

a late talker → not many words yet, but otherwise totally fine. eye contact, pointing, understands you. just quiet.

a language delay → trouble understanding instructions, not responding to their name, seeming disconnected.

same quiet kid. very different situation.

what "on track" looks like:

🔹 8 months → real babbling. "ba ba ba." not just random sounds. 🔹 12 months → responds to name, waves, points 🔹 18 months → 5–20 words. messy is fine. but words.

milestones are guidelines, not rules. but if several are missing, worth looking into.

signs that actually matter:

🚩 no pointing or waving by 12 months 🚩 not responding to their name 🚩 fewer than 5 words at 18 months — or losing words they had 🚩 simple instructions not landing 🚩 no interest in peek-a-boo or back-and-forth games

why early support helps:

the first three years are when a child's brain builds language the fastest.

early support isn't flashcards and clinics. it's play. it's learning to use bath time and breakfast differently. small shifts, big difference.

some late talkers catch up alone. but nobody knows in advance if yours will. an assessment is just information. if you're on the gold coast and that gut feeling won't go away — Bello Health Services works with toddlers on exactly this. first words, gestures, the whole early communication thing. and they come to your home, which honestly makes it so much easier.

A small routine change for us can feel like a BIG emotional shift for a neurodivergent child. 💙

Unexpected plans, changed schedules, different environments, or even a delayed activity can trigger anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, or meltdowns.

Behind every reaction is a child trying to feel secure in a world that suddenly feels unpredictable. 💛

Let’s replace “They’re overreacting” with “They’re having a hard time adjusting.”

Why do smart people struggle?

As an expert, you have forgotten what it was like to be a newbie. You skip steps or use references that sound like a foreign language to others. You are either sharing ideas in fragments or moving too quickly from point to point. Message development is a craft that comes in handy at this point. It helps you rebuild your thinking in a sequence that makes sense to someone looking at it from scratch.

The real barriers

While it’s a no brainer that one must avoid using technical terms or jargon when speaking to non-experts, that’s only the issue on the surface. The actual issues are deeper. Maybe your main point is buried under a lot of contexts. Or you are plugging in so many exceptions or qualifiers that your core insight disappears.

You may fail to highlight what matters or emphasize the wrong details. You need to simplify your message structure and slow down. People cannot follow your mental speed. They need time to catch up, while you connect your ideas better.

Using better frameworks

Start with the one thing that you would want to stay with people even if they forget everything you said. Build a bit of background around it to make sense. Explain a principle with a concrete example. Connect new concepts to something they are already familiar with.

One way you could check your structure is to see if it was simple enough for a middle-schooler to grasp. If not, you need to make your content simpler. This will make your ideas powerful enough to be remembered.    

Practice and deliver

Keep practicing your explanations with people and look out for any gaps in understanding. This is your clue to refine your speech further. Repeated cycles of practice and simplifying are all a part of speech development. Continue with it until your complicated ideas flow naturally.

Make a note of which examples land and which don’t. Notice when people lose the plot and become confused. Pay attention to your own discomfort as you simplify. Resist in the temptation to pack in all your knowledge and focus on making it more understandable. This will make your delivery smooth and deliberate.

Conclusion