When my daughter was in first grade, she still couldn’t say the /r/ sound. As both a parent and a speech-language pathologist, I knew that /r/ is one of the later-developing sounds, so I wasn’t concerned. Sure enough, within a year, the sound appeared naturally. By second grade, she was producing it clearly.

My own childhood story was very different. I also struggled with the /r/ sound, but in my case, it did not develop on its own. My mother picked me up early from school once a week to bring me to speech therapy. This was before therapy services were commonly available in schools. With explicit teaching and structured practice, I eventually learned the sound.

These two experiences illustrate an important point: Sometimes speech therapy is truly needed, and sometimes a child is simply still developing. The challenge for parents is knowing the difference.

As a speech-language pathologist, I hear questions like this all the time: “My child can’t say certain sounds. Should I be concerned?” Other parents ask, “My child is dropping the end sounds of words. Is that normal?” Sometimes the question is: “I can’t understand what my three-year-old is saying. Should she get speech therapy?” At the heart of all these questions is the same uncertainty: Is this part of normal development, or does my child need help?