I CAN the children’s communication charity, and The Communication Trust are relaunching the Talking Point website with new features.

Communication is a vital skill that all children need to learn. Without it they will not reach their full potential. Talking Point offers parents and carers the information they need to help their children develop these skills. If your son or daughter has difficulty with speaking they may need help, or they may struggle in nursery or school. With the right help with talking and listening, they can develop the skills they need. If you are concerned with your child’s speech, language and communication, you can check the progress of their development. There are also free resources for parents.

Parents have said that it is hard to find help and information about to support their child’s communication. Practitioners need to easily find information to help identify children’s speech, language and communication needs. The Talking Point website has been redesigned with these requests in mind – new additions to the site this year include: a database of resources and a searchable map of local services. The whole site is now designed to be easy to use on a mobile device or tablet including the progress checker that allows parents and practitioners to review a child’s progress in talking, listening and understanding. New content will continue to be added over the next year thanks to Department for Education funding.

Advice for parents

Children at 3 to 4 years will usually be actively learning language and asking many questions.

Children develop skills at different rates, but by 4 years usually children will:

• Listen to longer stories and answer questions about a storybook they have just read.

• Understand and often use colour, number and time related words, for example, ‘red’ car, ‘three’ fingers and ‘yesterday / tomorrow’.

• Be able to answer questions about ‘why’ something has happened.

• Use longer sentences and link sentences together.

• Describe events that have already happened e.g. ‘we went park.’

• Enjoy make-believe play.

• Start to like simple jokes.

• Ask many questions using words like ‘what’ ‘where’ and ‘why’.

• Still make mistakes with tense such as say ‘runned’ for ‘ran’ and ‘swimmed’ for ‘swam’.

• Have difficulties with a small number of sounds – for example r, w, l, f, th, sh, ch and dz.

• Start to be able to plan games with others.

For more information go to: www.talkingpoint.org.uk

Written by Rachel Harrison, speech and language therapist, on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services. www.integratedtreatmentservices.co.uk