Where is my Child’s Communication up to: The ‘Can Do’ Assessment Tool?
Joanne Jones 
A guide to the Can-Do Assessment Tool and why is it useful for you and your child.
As a parent, it is really important for you to know where your child is in terms of their language development, what their next steps should be, and how to help them get there if they are not progressing similarly to the majority of their peers. It takes people ‘in the system’ (which ever country you are in) a while to gain that understanding. You might have a concern about your child’s development, but you might ‘wait and see’ if they catch up for a while, if they don’t you might then go to a doctor or a paediatrician and then you may be referred to a speech and language therapist (and while the length of time from referral to appointment varies from country to country) it can be a period of many months. When you actually see a speech therapist they will tell you all the things your child should be doing for their age, but, even then you don’t always come away with a clear understanding of the answers to those 3 key questions (where your child’s development is, what the next thing they need to achieve is, and how you can support them to get there). With this in mind I created a free, easily accessible screening tool. This tool serves as an important starting point for the ‘Can Do Approach’. (ADD LINK TO TOOL).
Although not a replacement for a thorough speech and language assessment, completing this basic screening tool will place your child in one of 5 progressive groups based on their progress on 6 ‘skill areas’ (interaction, attention and listening, play, comprehension, expressive language and speech sounds) central to language development and in doing so, provide a means of beginning to understand how to support your child’s language development.
The 5 groups are not age specific so they aren’t about what your child’s peers are doing compared to them, the screening focusses on where your child is developmentally and what their next steps should be, no matter what their age. However, parents are often keen to understand the age norms for language development and the groups do follow this trajectory.
Up to 9 or even 12 months, children react to internal feelings. They cry or whinge and their parents or carers have to work out what it is they need. They don’t deliberately send a clear message to you as their parent. They just send a message out into the world and we, as parents grasp it, and understand it, and give them some milk, or change their nappy or put them to bed. We interpret what they need. These are Group 1
Children then become very deliberate message senders. This is usually evident by the time they are 12 to 18 months. They would look at you and realise that you are the key to getting what they want; they are not just focussed on the object. They are communicating with a person in order to get their needs met. They might put their arms up to get picked up, or make eye contact and then look over to the cupboard or fridge to indicate where the thing they want is.
By 18 month to 2 years old children should be using single words to communicate their needs. They are naming objects, both when asked and just spontaneously for fun, using single words to request and to show you, and using nouns and verbs. By 2 they should be combining two different words together into little phrases, ‘mummy shoe’, ‘daddy bye bye’ and these phrases should develop over that year and by 3 they should be consistently using 3, maybe even 4, word sentences. Full sentences should develop by 4 or 5. That’s when grammar comes in and children starts to make lots of mistakes.
Some children develop language skills, more slowly than their peers evenly across the 6 areas of development, whereas others may develop language skills more ‘unevenly’. The screening tool is also designed to pick this up. For example, some children will use full sentences but when you look at the different ‘skill areas’ or ‘areas of development’ they may not be interacting quite as well as they could or their speech sounds might not be clear making it difficult to understand what they are saying.
Another child may actually seem to be more advanced that they should be for their age. A child who is 2 or 3 would be expected to putting 2 or 3 words together. If they are using sentences, that is great, as long as they are making errors. Some children learn language in chunks, they learn big phrases but they couldn’t use the words in that phrase in a different order, they couldn’t mix it up. My daughter at 2 learned language in this way. At 2 she could tell you the whole of a story book as shed memorised it. At 18 months she exclaimed ‘this is the best party ever’, when she received a new sand pit. She used this phrase a lot if she liked something. So you think wow an 18 month old talking in sentences but then I realised she was learning by memory. While that’s not a bad thing, you have to be mindful of filling in the gaps, it’s a bit like Swiss cheese, its ok, it has its purpose but it’s got holes in it. Our job is to find out where those holes are and make sure they are filled.
Other children will have lots and lots of nouns but they won’t have any verbs. They may use lots of naming and but you have to go back and teach them verbs, you have to work on those building blocks for language.
Another example could be a child who uses lots of lots of speech, they recite a book or a television show and can talk in long sentences but, they don’t really interact, they don’t respond to their name, they only talk about things they are interested in, they only initiative communication with you when they are in the mood, they don’t really like to take turns in a conversation, so those interaction skills are falling behind.
The ‘can do’ screening provides a pie chart to help you clearly plot your child’s development in each ‘skill area’. This ‘spider’s web’ type format allows you to immediately see where your child is struggling and leads us to strategies to help, no matter what your child’s age. If you had a 5 year old who was in group 2, who wasn’t using any words to communicate but maybe had a good understanding you would do exactly the same thing if it was a 2 year old at that stage. The ‘can do’ strategies are effective whatever age your child is. Once you know where your child is up to we can work out which strategies will help them. You can get the ‘tools’ in your ‘tool box’ that you need to support their language development and make every interaction count!
If your child’s language development isn’t at the level the expected ‘textbook’ level for their age there is always something that can be done to support them. If they are really struggling there are other ways we can support them to communicate. It may be by using symbols, or PECS, or electronic communication aids. The important thing is supporting your child to find their voice however that ‘sounds’. The aim is to get their thoughts out into the world.