Ming, a speech therapist, explains the difference between speech (the sounds you make) and language (the message you convey). A delay means your child is behind but developing typically, like no words by 18 months. A disorder means uneven development, like reciting songs but not using words to ask for things. The cause matters because treatment differs.
Questions this video answers
At least six months.
If a child (at 1.5 years) is not able to say any single words, that may indicate a delay.
If a child (at 2 years) only speaks one word, that may indicate a delay.
Chapters
Hey, this is Ming here, a speech therapist from agentsofspeech.com today I want to talk about speech versus language or, you know, delay and disorder. All these terms. I mean, there are loads of diagnostic terms out there, many, many different terms that will make your head spin. And I'm sure you're only on this video here because you've been searching about it. So let's get right into it. Okay? So speech versus language. So speech is the sounds that I'm making right now that you can hear and understand now that speech, okay? There are some times when we pronounce words in the wrong way sometimes. So for instance, a child has a speech problem, most probably is that they cannot pronounce certain sounds. Okay. Or make certain sound. Produce is the word that we use a lot as therapists. And if they cannot produce, like a S sound and their name is Stacy, they will probably call themselves something like dati. Okay? That's like, they make the S into a T and that's what we call a stop. But all these things, you have to see a speech therapist in order to help your child, to assess your child, right? To know what kind of speech problems there are. So speech are the sounds, okay? Nothing to do with the message within. The message within is the language. So, for instance, I can pronounce all my. You know, my. My accent might be really off. You know, I'm pronouncing all the sounds incorrectly. I might be, like using. If I'm saying this right, the thumbnail. I might become like a f, like fis or this or whatever, turn into a V. Then, you know, you still understand the message. It just doesn't sound correct. Okay? You still understand that. So that's the language part. And language doesn't only include speech. It includes other things. Like what I'm doing right now. My hands. Right. My facial expression is also language, right? My eye contact. When I look at you, I'm giving you some sort of message, okay? So language is all about the message that I'm trying to bring across to you, like, to convey to you. I can use different methods, be in written form. It could be in, like, signing, you know, it could be anything, all right? And that's something you have to be aware of, the difference between speech and language. When a therapist talks to you about, oh, oh, we're going to work on this language, right? Don't think that, oh, man, they're going to do, like, all the talking and everything. It might not be always about talking. It might be about different things, okay? So that's the difference between speech and language. How about delay in disorder? So delay in disorder is like a term that even, like therapists are very careful in giving. Why we give this diagnosis is because a delay, to some extent, it infers the fact that, oh, they're just delayed and they're going to catch up. Right. They're following the progressive, elemental patterns. Right? Like, for instance, turnover, being able to sit up and then can stand up and crawl or whatever. That's a typical developmental. Chronologically speaking, that's how children grow up. Right. And if you talk about language, yeah, we also have milestones for that. So speech. We also have milestones. So when you see a child hitting some milestones, but they're not chasing up to their peer groups, that might be a delay, you know, like the order is correct, but they're not up there yet. It might be a delay. What constitutes a delay is at least six months. So let's say if your child is at one and a half years old, right, and they aren't able to say any single words, then that might be a delay already. Or maybe if they're two and they only speak like one word, then, yeah, that's the delay already. Right. So what is a disorder then? Disorder is something that we call when there's. There is a, you know, a disorder meaning something that's out of order. Right? So for instance, a child can do something very well, but yet unable to do something else. So. So in a previous video, we talked about how a child can use words for certain things, right? For. For reciting songs, whatever. But when it comes to talking to a person, right, when it comes to communicating their needs, they still use their hands to pull towards something to some extent that might be considered a disorder. Whilst these two terms are getting muddled up in. In modern day, because therapists like myself, we don't want to infer that it's a delay and they can catch up and therefore we have more responsibility. That's just how the world works with professionals. We want to just like, I don't want to take as much risk with my wordings, right? So that's just the fact, man. I mean, whatever we try to do, we try to be conservative, okay? And that's the difference between delay and disorder. Obviously, there's a lot more things you have to do in terms of like, assessments and everything to see the difference of which. Okay. Also, if your child is already having a different disorder, it might be autism, might be adhd, maybe, whatever, automatically it might already constitute a language disorder. As well, because. Because of that. That disorder that they already have. Right. So I don't want to confuse you anymore. There are loads of diagnosis out there on top of my head. There's a few within speech. There's like, phonological disorders, articulation disorders, you know, that might be like dysarthria, apraxia, whatever, that are a lot more rare. And, you know, like, parents are always asking me about, oh, does my child have apraxia, have dysaugery? I have, you know, like, is it a phonological thing? I don't know. You have to see your local speech therapist. They have to sit down and do an assessment in order to tell you, okay, so about all this, why does all this diagnosis and everything matter? Okay, first of all, number one, of course, you want to know what your child has. Okay? And to me, that's fair enough. That's a fair point. But at the same time, for me, at the very least, having a diagnosis, an accurate diagnosis about speech is very important. Okay. About speech. Because if a child can produce or cannot produce some sounds, there must be an underlying reason behind it, and the treatment needs to be pinpoint at the reasons why. So for, for example, going back to, to the. The notion of saying, okay, let's not say the S. Let's say the L sound like a very common mistake that children have the, The L sound, then why is it that they cannot do it? Is it because they can't hear the difference between the L and the Y sound like la and ya? Or is it because that it's a functional thing that they cannot put the tongue to the top of. Of the mouth, like what we call alveolar ridge at the top, like here. All right. Over, like, is it because of that? Then the treatment approach would be vastly different. All right? So we have to know these before we do speech. Whereas in language, it's rather different because. Especially when we're doing speech therapy, I don't know about other types. Right. Of therapy. What I mean is, when we're doing language, we're thinking about, okay, this is the sentence length we're trying, or these are the words I'm teaching. This is the context I'm teaching in. Right. Play with cards with, like, a storybook, whatever. Me knowing whether if it's a delay or a disorder doesn't matter. It does matter that, like, what goals I'm picking. Right. But at the same time, it doesn't really matter because language is a very naturalistic thing that I am teaching. It's like the communication the interaction between us two. I'm teaching them to play. I'm teaching them after they know how to play and know the context and everything and that I'm trying to teach them to put words in the situation. Whether if it's a disorder or delay. The goals can be very similar and the results can be very similar. The way that I do it can be very similar because at the end of the day, I'm teaching them to communicate with me with these certain words and I can go up and down the level, the language level and it doesn't really matter what type of diagnosis it is in a language perspective. Okay? So I hope this video has straighten things up for you and you're looking for answers and everything whilst you're waiting for therapy or you know you're going through therapy already, don't know what to do at home. I want you to go to agents of Speech.com checklist for a list of tools and toys that we recommend you to get if you're starting home therapy for yourself or you're trying to do some like home practice. Okay? So that's it for this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye.
