Before looking at these milestones, you should read this.
By 7 years your child should:
Listening and Understanding
- Understand many different concepts for time (eg. today, tomorrow, days of week, last week), position (eg. first, middle, last), comparatives (eg. bigger) and superlatives (eg. biggest)
- Understand more complex opposites (eg. blunt-sharp, sweet-sour)
- Follow 3 step instructions, eg. “Go to your room, get your bag, then meet me at the front door”.
Speech Sounds and Talking
- Use a range of pronouns correctly – eg. we, her, them, yours, their, himself, yourselves.
- Use regular past (eg. walked) and irregular past (eg. went) tense
- Be able to be understood 100% of the time by strangers, even if he still has trouble with the ‘th’ sounds.
- Talk in long, complex sentences and tell stories
- Identify the first and last sound in a spoken word
- Identify whether 2 words rhyme and make up words to rhyme with a given word
- Use thousands of words
- Answer a variety of questions, eg. “what”, “who”, “where”, “why”, “how”, “when”, and “how many”
Social Skills
- Ask questions for information
- Negotiate solutions to problems
- Acquire a sense of humour but may not understand sarcasm
- Develop judgment of right versus wrong and fair versus unfair
- Want to be liked and accepted by friends
Literacy
- Try to spell and read words by sounding out
- Use some punctuation eg. capital letter at start of a sentence and full-stop at end of sentence
- Read and retell stories
- Identify an increasing number of words
Play
- Cooperate with others – eg. negotiating, assigning roles and playing fairly
- Engage in well-organised play – eg. board games and card games
- Engage in play which includes themes never personally experienced (e.g. going to space)
- Begin to deal well with losing
For more information
- What is a Speech Pathologist?
- Speech Tools Services
- Learning Two Languages by ASHA
- Find a Speech Pathologist with Speech Pathology Australia
Disclaimer:
This advice is not intended to replace the recommendations of a Speech Pathologist for an individual with a communication impairment. If you have concerns about your child’s speech and language development, please contact a Speech Pathologist.
