Help! No One Can Understand My Toddler!

In my work as an Early Intervention Speech-Language Pathologist, I met with families all week long who were concerned about their toddler’s intelligibility. Some of these children ended up requiring speech and language services but many of them were simply moving through a very common stage of language development. It is a very rare child who can be understood clearly in their early attempts at communicating with words. Perhaps your neighbor’s kid is the local protégé but most children aren’t 100% intelligible to their families until they’re almost three years old. And that age bumps up to four years old for unfamiliar listeners (meaning, anyone from a stranger at the grocery store or Aunt Meg who stops by once a month).

The following tables can hopefully help you take a deep breath and see that your child is most likely doing just fine:

How well words can be understood by parents
By 18 months a child’s speech is normally 25% intelligible
By 24 months a child’s speech is normally 50 -75% intelligible
By 36 months a child’s speech is normally 75-100% intelligible

Bowen, C. (2011). Table1: Intelligibility. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/ on Nov 17, 2020.

How well words can be understood by strangers
Child aged 12 months = 25% intelligible
Child aged 24 months = 50% intelligible
Child aged 36 months = 75% intelligible
Child aged 48 months = 100% intelligible

Bowen, C. (2011). Table1: Intelligibility. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/ on Nov 17, 2020.

Many of the “problems” that lead to poor understanding of our little ones are functions of predictable and developmentally appropriate sound errors such as substituting one sound for another or by simplifying words. If you start to pick up on the pattern, it may be easier for you to understand your child and decrease both their frustration as well as yours.

For example, my son is just barely coming out of a several month long stint of substituting most initial consonants in words with a “d” sound. When he’d say something like “duck” we’d have to do some problem-solving to figure out if he meant a duck, a truck, or that something was stuck. (This morning’s example: “bull dose duck!” Our logical conclusion that his bulldozer was stuck proved incorrect. In fact, he was saying that his bulldozer was pushing a duck! Lol). Or, we’d have to mentally translate a phrase like “doe deep” into “go sleep”. Once we got his unique little pattern set in our minds, it was easier to understand him and help him communicate with his extended family (during the rare Covid-times visit or on the much more frequent video chats) by translating his more tricky words and phrases. (“He just asked you X”).

Here are some common substitutions or simplifications that your toddler might be using in their daily jabberings:

• substituting an easier to say consonant in place of a harder to produce consonant; examples:
  • cat — dat
  • road — woad
  • very — berry
• deleting one consonant out of a cluster of consonants; examples:
  • spoon — soon
  • truck — tuck
  • great — gate
• dropping the final consonant; examples:
  • goop — goo
  • help — hell
  • bear — beah
• deleting entire syllables; examples:
  • banana — nana
  • grandma — mama
  • excavator — vator
• a combination of the above; examples:
  • excavator — bator
  • grandma — gama
  • train track– tain ta

Still Concerned? Try Reaching Out to these Organizations

If you’re still concerned about your child’s intelligibility after reading the info in this post then I would highly recommend reaching out to your local Early Invention program (no doctor referral needed).

Early Intervention is a federally mandated program that is locally run by your state. As such, every state has federal oversite and funding but has leeway in how it implements the program. Early Intervention offers free developmental testing for children from birth to 36 months (three years old). Therapy is then offered (or not) based off of test results for a sliding fee based on income (in some states) or for free (in other states).

Your local Early Intervention providers can assess your child and let you know if there’s a concern or not and can give you resources for how to move forward.

For more information regarding Early Intervention and to find your state’s program, please visit: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/parents/states.html

If your child is older than 36 months, you can reach out to your local school district’s early childhood program for evaluation. Just as with Early Intervention, every school district has different ways of handling testing and different wait times (especially during summer and/or Covid).

What are some of the cute and unique ways that your kids say things? I’d love to hear them in the comments below! 😊

Hello! I’m Briana!

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