quick question

[Saker]

When speech therapists etc say a child is speaking in e.g. 4 word sentences, do they count every single word or are only significant words like nouns or verbs counted?

Just trying to understand some of the reports on my ds2. They say he speaks in 4-5 word sentences but I think at home he can use a lot more than that. But then it occurred to me that it might not just be as simple as counting the words....

nope- they mean keywords. So there may be a lot more other words iyswim.

Thanks Jimjams - that's useful.

What counts as key words - don't bother if it's too complicated to explain quickly.

hi christie...poss hijack about to occur...i was wondering where words like in/on and under fit in?

Thanks Christie that helps with the receptive bit. Does the same apply to speech - so if Ds2 says e.g. the giraffe is going to jump into the water.

Would that count as talking in a three word sentence ie giraffe, jump and water?

Thanks Christie. That helps. In ds2's case his receptive language is either behind or just about level with his expressive language. He has problems with processing. However he can actually string quite a long sentence together. So I was a bit concerned when they said he was only talking in 4 or 5 word sentences. But in fact that's quite good really then I think for a 3.10y old.