Although the child speech delay test cannot completely replace specialist examination and diagnosis measures, it will make a great contribution in detecting and assessing risks in young children right from the developmental stages. Therefore, if parents feel worried and doubtful about their child’s ability to use language and speech, they can conduct this test at home to get the best assessment.
Why is it necessary to test speech delay for children?
Speech delay is known to be one of the conditions that cause many obstacles to the communication ability of many young children. According to the statistics found, the rate of children with speech delay is currently showing significant signs of increase, making many parents feel worried and confused.
The symptoms of children with speech delay will often increase markedly over time, especially when the child reaches school age. However, experts share that, if it is possible to detect speech delay at an early stage, the intervention and improvement for children will have more opportunities for development, and children will easily increase their language ability. language and community integration.
Therefore, when suspecting that their children have signs of speech delay, parents should quickly bring their children to be examined and diagnosed at hospitals and specialized facilities. However, if still not sure about the condition of a young child, parents can also learn and perform a speech delay test at home to assess the risk of each young child, thereby making a decision to visit. timely examination and intervention.
Currently, in order to monitor and assess well the speech delay of young children at each stage, experts recommend using the ASQ-3 questionnaire (Ages and Stages Questionnaire, Third Edition). This is a set of questions developed and perfected by experts from the University of Oregon, USA and widely used for more than 40 years.
Until now, the ASQ-3 test is considered the gold standard to help assess and effectively screen the development of each young child, especially children from 1 month to 66 months old. This test has now been translated into many languages and widely used in many countries around the world, in each country there will be some basic changes to suit the personality and unique characteristics of the child.
Therefore, at each different stage or when realizing that young children show signs of language retardation, limited verbal communication ability, parents should give children a test to assess and home screening. The detection and intervention of speech delay in the early stages will bring a lot of effects, helping young children easily develop their ability to learn and absorb effectively to improve communication better.
Subjects who need to perform the slow-speech test
The symptoms of children with delayed speech can start very early. Therefore, when researching and developing a test for children with speech delay, experts also consider supporting children from 1 month to 66 months old.
A child with a speech delay is identified when the child’s language development is slower than that of his or her peers and the child is unable to meet the standard developmental milestones. In fact, children with simple speech delay still have the ability to develop well in other aspects such as physical, mental, and intellectual. Therefore, if they can intervene well, children will still have the opportunity to perfect and develop comprehensively in the future.
Right from the first years of life, parents need to pay close attention to promptly detect abnormal signs of children. Although each child will have a different language development rate, the fact that children are retarded and repeatedly do not reach the normal language development milestones is also one of the concerns and needs support.
The ASQ-3 test suite has a total of 21 questions and is divided into sets at different stages of development. Depending on the age of each child, parents can choose the appropriate test kit to test and evaluate most accurately.
In practice, young children are not able to perform well on this assessment on their own, so parents, immediate caregivers, teachers or specialist doctors will be the ones to do. It will take you about 10 to 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire around the daily activities of young children.
Contents of test for children with delayed speech ASQ-3
As shared, the ASQ-3 speech delay test is divided into several sets corresponding to different age levels in children from 1 month to 66 months old. Depending on the age of each child, parents can choose the appropriate set of questions to assess and test the growth rate of young children.
In fact, the ASQ-3 test can not only test a child’s communication and language ability, but it also assesses other aspects such as gross motor, fine motor, and imitation ability. individual-society. Therefore, to be able to individually assess the child’s speech delay through each stage, parents only need to observe and perform the following simple questions.
For children 0 months to under 3 months old
1. Does your child not know how to express when he or she feels hungry or wants to go to the toilet?
2. Does the child not make any sounds?
3. Does the child startle, blink, or react to strong noises?
For children from 3 months to 6 months
1. Does the child laugh out loud?
2. When he hears voices or other sounds, does the baby stop crying?
3. When the child sees a favorite toy or someone, does the child make a sound?
For babies 6 months to 9 months
1. Does the child make simple sounds like “ba”, “ga”, “ha”, “da”, “ca”, ta”?
2. When your child’s name is called or when a loud noise occurs, does the child react or turn his head to look?
3. When someone imitates a child’s sound, does the child repeat the sound?
For children from 9 months to 12 months old
1. When you say “no”, does your child stop his or her behavior and activities?
2. Does the child turn his head to search when he hears loud noises?
3. Does the child make the sounds “baba”, “caca”, “gaga”, “nana”?
For children from 12 months to 23 months old
1. Apart from sounds like “baba”, “nana”, “gaga”, does the child make any other words?
2. Does the child follow simple requests and commands? For example, the chin of a teddy bear, the storage of a car.
3. Does the child nod, shake his head or point at objects?
For children from 24 months to 35 months old
1. Does the child use and speak 2 to 3 word sentences well in the right context and situation?
2. When asked, does the child point to the correct object or animal in the picture? For example, when asked “Where is the cat?” Is the child pointing at the correct cat?
3. Can the child follow simple instructions and requests? For example, sit down, bow your head.
For children from 36 months to 47 months old
1. Does the child speak and use sentences with 3 to 4 words well in the context? For example, I want to eat fish.
2. Does the child know how to point to body parts? For example, nose, ears, mouth, etc.
3. When asked, can the child introduce himself/her name?
For children from 48 months to 59 months old
1. Does the child know how to use words to describe at least 2 features of objects? For example, the cat is big and round.
2. Can the child name animals and objects in the same group? For example, apples, oranges, and longans belong to the fruit group.
3. Does the child know how to use quantity or time words? For example, today, 3 apples,…
For children from 60 months to 66 months old
1. Can the child speak in sentences of 4 to 5 words? For example, Mother came home from the market.
2. Can the child follow the sequence of requests correctly? For example, Enter the room, get the pillow, bring it to mom.
3. Does the child know how to use words to compare? For example, Mom is older than me.
If the child cannot perform 2 out of 3 skills in the field of communication and language, it is likely that the child is having a speech delay. At this time, parents should quickly bring their children to visit reputable specialized facilities and hospitals to receive the best support from doctors.
What should parents do when their child has a speech delay?
Currently, there are many good interventions for children with speech delay, especially if children are intervened at an early stage, children will have more opportunities for comprehensive language development. Experts can give children special education and therapy with appropriate methods to help children gradually increase their vocabulary and improve their own speaking and communication skills.
However, besides that, young children also need to receive timely attention and support from their families and parents. Immediately after performing the test and realizing that there is a high risk of speech delay in children, parents should quickly conduct an examination and accurate diagnosis for the child.
In addition, you can also support your child with the following at-home measures:
- Teach children with speech delays in language development by playing with them. Young children will always be attracted to fun activities, so when playing with children, parents should integrate teaching children vocabulary and stimulating children’s ability to interact and explore.
- Reading books with children, telling stories to children is also an effective way to increase vocabulary in children with speech delay.
- Talk more often, communicate more with children about activities around daily life or topics that children feel interested in. In this way, young children not only gradually improve their speaking ability, but also become closer and closer to loved ones in the family.
- Music is also one of the effective tools to increase language acquisition in children. Parents can expose their children to musical instruments or regularly let them listen to age-appropriate music with simple and easy-to-understand lyrics.
- Give children more opportunities to have fun and interact with the outside world. When discovering and observing new things, children will feel more interested, thereby stimulating the need to learn and connect.
- Parents should also pay attention to the diet of young children. Increase the supplement of foods containing many minerals, vitamins, and Omega-3 that are beneficial for health and brain. At the same time, limit processed foods containing many harmful substances.
- It is necessary to control the time children use electronic devices, especially phones and iPads. Parents need to observe and filter information appropriate to the child’s age, avoiding letting children use the phone too often.
Performing a test for children with speech delay helps parents to assess and promptly detect abnormalities in the language development process in children. Hopefully, through this shared information, readers can easily screen the risk of speech delay in children and take appropriate interventions to help children develop comprehensively in the future.
