When a child starts speaking later than normal, this is called speech delay (SLD). The appearance of speech may be due to psycho-emotional factors, hearing impairment, autism, mental retardation, due to the presence of cerebral palsy, brain damage that occurred during the neonatal period, bilingualism, or late maturation of the child.
Speech is a motor act, which is aimed at the implementation of verbal reactions with the help of the articulatory apparatus. Language is a symbolic system of relations of several individuals with each other. Usually a person thinks in symbols, and not in English, Russian, German or other languages. In order for this symbolic reaction to be implemented in the language, the most complex processes in the brain go through. A full speech is possible when there is:
Initially, problems with speech disorders are detected in the primary medical link - at a pediatrician's appointment. If such a problem is present in a child, it can negatively affect his overall mental, emotional and social development.
Symptoms of mental pathology are manifested:
Treatment prospects are most favorable if these changes are detected early.
A careful look and attempts to repeat the articulation of an adult in a child can already be caught at 1-2 weeks of age. At 1.5 months, the first cooing begins, which at first consists only of vowels, and after 1-2 months, consonants also join them. By 4 months, you can hear a hum in the form of the sound of a flute. Babble in a child begins by 7-8 months, and the pronunciation of individual syllables also occurs. By the end of this stage, modulated babble appears, that is, babble with the connection of certain intonations. As it develops, after another 1.5 months, the child begins to speak short words ma-ma, pa-pa, ba-ba. After a year, the baby compares these words in meaning with specific people. By 13-15 months, a child already has a few words in their vocabulary. By the age of one and a half years, onomatopoeia of various surrounding sounds can be distinguished. Attempts to pronounce small monosyllabic phrases occur by 20 months. By the age of two, the baby may already start asking questions such as “what is this?”. The third year of life is marked by the appearance of words used in various cases, and subordinate clauses are also used. Long phrases and short monologues will appear by the age of 4-5.
Speech development of young children in the future depends on the cultural and social status of the family and activities with the child in various educational games.
In boys, RRR occurs 4 times more often than in girls. In the general population of children, the figures range from 3 to 10%.
Briefly, the reasons were described earlier, but we will dwell on them in more detail:
If there is a suspicion of speech delay, you must first find out the features of the family history, the course of pregnancy and childbirth. It is imperative to exclude genetic syndromes, dimorphism and chromosomal diseases. Consultations of an ENT doctor, a geneticist, a neurologist and a psychologist are prescribed.
Delayed speech development in children is treated comprehensively by several specialists after a preliminary examination. A psychotherapist must treat a child with elective mutism. Drug therapy is prescribed taking into account the underlying disease.
However, there are medicinal substances that have a non-specific effect of general action.
In this article:
Starting a conversation about delayed speech development in children at 3 years old, it should be noted that each child is individual. Therefore, it is not worth raising a panic and ringing all the bells if you find some inhibitions in the development of speech in your child. You are not the only family on earth whose children begin to speak their first conscious words by age 4. It's as individual as crawling. Some are happy to conquer kilometers of rooms on all fours and stand on their feet by the year. Others, in principle, do not like to crawl - they can sit up to 12 months, and they can walk along the wall as early as eight. Try to treat speech delay as calmly, but take appropriate measures. The first thing you should do is visit your local doctor for an examination and consultation.
According to psychologists, his cognitive process depends on the speech of the child. Speech therapists are also not happy with such a diagnosis, so they immediately respond to the slightest complaint and often quickly cope with the problem that has arisen. So you can entrust your child to specialists and take a small and simple course with him that will help him catch up with his peers. Along with speech, the horizons, worldview expand, logical thinking improves and character is formed. Since all this is closely interconnected, a child without serious deviations will quickly master speech, and after a few weeks you will forget that there was such a problem in your family.
First of all, pay attention to your communication with the baby. Perhaps his speech lag is due to the fact that you communicate little with the child.
Lack of demand for speech occurs in some cases:
Also, the silent state is sometimes delayed for genetic reasons - due to the sluggish maturation of speech nerve cells. The child may be hard of hearing and that is why not talk to you. Or, in the worst case scenario - which is rare, but, alas, happens - the cause may be brain damage.
Deviation from the proposed norms for 1-2 months (lead or lag) will also be the norm. If the child is lagging behind in several indicators at once, or he does not have any skills at all, then you should contact a specialist, pick up educational games and exercises and engage with the baby regularly.
Consider the developmental norms from birth by months, so that it is easier to determine if there are deviations and at what stage they appeared.
Up to a year and a half, a child develops and strengthens what he has learned in a year. He tends to call with one syllable a number of unrelated objects that begin with this syllable: “ka” - porridge, pencil, Katya (doll), cat (maybe “ko”). "Bam" - fell, knocked, ringing, bath for bathing (because he decided so). The child does not realize what is common between objects. If he knows what a journal, a notebook is, distinguishes a pen from a pencil, then at the moment it is impossible to explain to him that all this is an office.
If after a year and a half the child's speech does not become more coherent, then this is the first signal to go for a test. If there are no changes by the age of three, then it is better to sign up for a visit to a psychologist, speech therapist and district pediatrician for a general examination and analysis.
By the second year, children recognize animals and objects, voice them as best they can, modernize sounds into more complex phrases: "misha", "kitty", "mu-ka" (cow), "no-no" (horse). It becomes easier to understand the needs of the child. He knows how to find the essence and express it in one word: “yum”, “kup”, “tul” (chair), “give” (pointing to an object), “pi”, “aaa”. At this time, children of the same age can talk differently. Each child has his own upbringing and family too
- Accordingly, the environment and familiar objects are different for everyone. Children at 2 years old learn the world that is close to them. But an interesting fact is that, communicating with each other in syllables, they accept and understand each other, exchanging toys and laughing from their own word forms.
At the turn of 2-3 years, the child already understands how to put the word in the past or future tense, but often confuses the gender. He can call himself from a third name: “Lena, yes, she will” “Misha asked his mother” - and at the same time correctly show his demands.
By the third year of life, the child begins to speak coherently and measuredly. Some children may begin to read in syllables. There is an awareness of the importance of intonation, comprehension of combining several words into one category. For example: oak, birch, spruce are trees. Dress, shirt, stockings are clothes. In addition to acquired and studied meaningful words, fictional words slip through, with which the baby is still comfortable.
At three years old, a child must know 1,500 words or more. If the child's speech lags behind the norm, the prerequisites for reading remain passive. It is impossible to teach a child to write or think logically, because he cannot form his thoughts into words even “to himself”.
With such manifestations, by contacting a speech therapist and psychologist, you prevent developmental delay by revealing the true problem of the baby's silence.By dismantling the obstacle on the way to speech as quickly as possible, doctors eliminate the problem completely, without a trace. But the longer the problem remains in your family, the deeper it is rooted in the psyche, and in just six months it will be much more difficult to deal with it.
Pay attention to the development of the child's speech during the first year of life. If for eight months your baby only “mumbles” and occasionally “gurgles” - this is not an indicator that he is very calm, but a signal that you need to go to the doctors. After the ninth month, everything that the child has learned begins to consolidate and become more complicated. If all this time your baby was silent, then he will have nothing to fix.
If your baby turns around at the call and emotionally expresses his desires, then this is normal.
development. If at the same time he is more and more silent, it is worth contacting a speech therapist. After a year of life, children are able to show in the picture the object and animal that their parents name, recognize familiar faces in photographs, show individual parts of the body and try to repeat at least the first syllable of the whole word.
At two years old, the baby not only enters into a conversation with adults, simulating a conversation with the help of short phrases and nods, pointing a finger in the right direction. He can also fulfill the request of an adult to give him something, bring a ball, show a new doll, give him a drink from a mug.
By the age of three, simple sentences are formed from simple words like “let's go for a walk”, “I need to eat”, “I want to go there”. Children are the first to say hello, enter into a dialogue, tell their news: “They bought me a dress”, “The boy gave me a toy”. The interest of adults encourages the development of thought, forming more and more complex sentences.
Usually, the lag in speech development is not noticed immediately, but when there is a serious inhibition, noticeable not only to others, but also to the parents themselves - who can reassure themselves for a long time, they say, this happens to children, all children are different, etc. We repeat: do not faint, but also there is no need to relax. Waiting for the problem to go away by itself and your child suddenly speaking at one point in a clear and intelligible speech will be wrong and harmful. You should treat the problem without panic, but carefully. Show the child to the doctor and tell that you have noticed some deviations in the development of speech. After the district pediatrician, you will be referred to the necessary consultations of specialists who help children with similar problems quickly catch up with their peers.
Before prescribing treatment, it is necessary to identify the essence of the problem. And, as already known, speech delay can occur for various reasons. And the treatment of each of the causes should be purely individual.
If the matter is a lack of attention or, conversely, excessive care of a single child, then a psychologist takes over the matter, necessarily working with both the child and his relatives. Particular attention will be paid to the child's emotions and the stages of their occurrence - so the psychologist will find the root of the problem and improve the child's internal state. After awakening the desire to learn, a speech therapist is connected to work with the child.
If the child does not speak due to a neuralgic diagnosis, then special drugs will help, the use of which promotes the regeneration of brain cells. In the process of taking the pills, the baby begins to change before our eyes: he is drawn to communication, tries to find something new on his own, with his parents and friends. It is also possible to immerse the child in a hypnotic therapeutic sleep or treatment using micropolarization. This may sound intimidating to loving parents, but the procedure is actually completely painless. The device that affects the child's brain activity emits a minimum number of electrical impulses, which are ten times weaker than the current during the electrophoresis procedure.
If the problem of speech is due to the fact that the baby does not hear sounds, according to the testimony of the child, they can be assigned to a school where they teach how to live in a world without sounds.
Speech development delay (SRR) is not the child's ability to form words and sentences, and his lag behind the calendar terms of development. The main reasons for the lag in speech development include a complicated obstetric anamnesis. The diagnosis of delayed speech development is made to children after 3 years.
Every year the problem of delayed speech development in children becomes more and more urgent. Modern parents can be conditionally divided into 2 groups. For the former, the delay in speech development is comparable to a natural disaster, they fall into despair if their child cannot remember a nursery rhyme or does not pronounce certain sounds. The latter, on the contrary, turn to specialists for help when it is already too late to fully rehabilitate the child.
Doctors tend to reassure overly worried parents. The fact is that the delay in speech development in children does not have a clear definition, therefore, even if the baby says fewer words than it should be for a certain age, you should not worry too much.
Lack of speech, or even "baby language", babbling may be an individual feature of the child, and he will quickly catch up with his peers in the future. In addition, some boys begin to pronounce words much later than girls.
However, in the event of the appearance of alarming symptoms of a true delay in speech development in a child aged one and a half years, it is necessary to consult a specialist.
It should be borne in mind that under certain factors, the risk of a serious developmental disorder in children increases markedly.
Delayed speech development in children can be caused by various infectious diseases, viruses or heredity. Here are some viruses that can aggravate speech delay in children:
herpes simplex virus (herpesvirus 1, 2),
Epstein-Barra (herpesvirus 4),
cytomegalovirus (cytomegalovirus),
ruberella (ruberella),
toxoplasma (toxoplasma),
Such harmless at first glance virus stamps in a latent form can negatively affect the development of a child and serve as an impetus for a lag in speech and mental development. The carriers of these viruses are the vast majority of people on the planet. They can be passed from mother to fetus in utero, during breastfeeding, by kissing, and by other household means.
Speech development delay occurs due to a combination of a number of factors:
These factors disrupt the central nervous system. Higher brain functions may be impaired, which increases the risk of speech dysfunctions and other neuropsychiatric disorders. It is worth noting that almost all children are in the "risk group" of speech development delay.
With a delay in speech development in children, only the conversation of the baby suffers. At the same time, the child adequately responds to requests addressed to him and is able to fulfill various requests, he responds to adults, recognizes his relatives, actively makes contact with the outside world, but practically does not speak.
In children with a true delay in speech development, motor and behavioral dysfunctions are not diagnosed. ZRR in the vast majority of cases is not accompanied by mental retardation. However, speech problems can become a hindrance to the further development of the baby and his socialization.
Speech development can be reversed due to disturbances in the central nervous system after an injury or infectious disease. Of great importance is the hereditary predisposition of the baby to speech activity.
Many are sure that the speech delay in a child is the fault of the parents, since they do not talk to him, this is a misconception. ZRR in children most often occurs due to organic damage to the brain and viruses. A child who is not engaged will still walk and try to babble.
A child with a true speech delay is not. Quite rarely, speech development slows down due to insufficient attention from adults or lack of demand for speech. It is equally bad when the child is left to himself or the parents are overprotective.
Let's try to figure out what is children's speech? Until the age of two, the child speaks a "childish" language, which is a variant of the norm, not a speech delay. The words of the children's lexicon include, for example, the phrase "bi-bi" (car) or "gaf-gaf" (dog), "kup-kup" instead of "swim", "mu-mu" instead of "cow". You need to seek help from specialists only if a child at 2 years old cannot build new phrases or sentences from these sounds.
With careful observation of the child, you can notice the symptoms of speech disorders at a very early age. So, a baby with pathologies of the speech apparatus in the first month will suck weaker than other babies. Later, he may have trouble chewing food. It is very important to diagnose speech development delay as early as possible, then, with effective treatment, the child will quickly catch up with peers.
The following are some of the early signs of language delay in children under two years of age.
1. At three months, the child does not call, does not react to the presence of adults. From a certain time, from about 4-6 months, cooing disappears, this is the norm, it is replaced by baby talk;
2. A baby under 5 months old does not roar, does not pronounce the consonants g, x, k, and the vowels y, s;
2. From 6 months, the child practically does not babble (ma-ma, ba-ba);
3. At 8-9 months, the baby does not babble
4. By the age of 1, the child’s vocabulary contains less than 5 words like “ma-ma”, “ba-ba”, “nya-nya”, “give”, etc. Speech activity is minimal, he speaks little “his own language”
5. Closer to a year and a half, the baby does not pronounce the words “dad”, “mother” addressed to the parents. Does not understand his own name, the names of surrounding objects
6. At the age of one and a half, the child does not understand the speech addressed to him and does not respond to the requests of his parents;
7. At 2 years old, a child cannot build simple sentences.
Pediatric pediatrics allows a lag in speech development of 4-5 months for boys, and 2-3 months for girls. That is, if the boy does not babble for a year, this is also a variant of the norm of speech development.
In the clinic of Dr. Lev Levit, a safe author's technique of cranio-cerebral stimulation (from Latin cranium - skull, cerebrum - brain) is used to treat speech development delay. This method is aimed at improving the biochemical processes in the brain lobes responsible for speech activity and communication.
The traditional approach to the treatment of delayed speech and psychoverbal development includes:
There is no medical treatment at the center. Correction, speech training and speech therapy classes with the child during the course are not carried out. However, children after a course of SAMI treatment begin to advance in speech, because the procedures act on the root cause of speech development delay.
With subsequent speech therapy correction and classes with the child, such children quickly overcome the delay in speech development and are no different from their peers.
The cranio-cerebral stimulation technique aims to improve the functioning of those parts of the brain that do not function well enough. In the case of ZRR, the child's speech activity improves.
The method of circulation of cerebrospinal fluid and, as a result, in children with speech problems and a general lag, metabolism also improves.
During the course of cranio-cerebral therapy, most children with delayed speech development show improvements in many parameters, including linguo-speech:
- Improved perception of the environment
- Increased vocabulary
- Increased interest in the surrounding world, in society,
- Whole sentences appear in the vocabulary of children with speech development delay,
- Cleansing processes are launched in the body, and the physiological parameters of children change. Children with a lack of body weight gradually gain the necessary kilograms, and vice versa. The condition of the hair changes - the hair becomes soft and shiny, the keratinization of the palms and feet disappears, etc.),
- In some children, sensitivity to sharp sounds decreases,
- Improves muscle tone.
Speech delay in children is a cause for concern. You should not listen to advice from neighbors, or people on the forum, such as: “My nephew spoke at the age of 4 in whole sentences at once, began to read Borodino by heart and now he cannot be stopped.” Such cases are very rare, much more often problems with speech development remain in children and at school, and in some for life.
It is necessary to go to a consultation with a specialist to identify problems with speech development. It will also help distinguish ADHD from similar, more serious disorders such as autism, mental retardation, and others. If a child has been diagnosed with delayed speech and mental development or other dysfunction, it is necessary to start therapy as soon as possible.
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In an attempt to avoid delayed speech development (SRR), mothers often turn to speech therapists when babies are not yet 2 years old. To avoid such mistakes, you need to understand the causes of speech delay and distinguish between warning signs. If your baby is healthy but refuses to talk, you need to start by using all possible means to activate his abilities at home.
Signs of RDD can be seen already in the first months of life. An alarm signal for parents should be the lack of reaction to the sounds of voices and other noises at the age of up to six months . Later, the children begin to “walk”, repeating vowel sounds. By the year the baby must know a few words or syllables with which he designates specific objects. A very quiet baby who does not babble should cause alarm in adults.
By one and a half years the child must recognize his name, know a few dozen words and understand simple requests. If the baby does not respond to the sounds of the voice, does not fulfill elementary requests, this may be a sign of speech delay.
biennial can usually say 20-30 simple words and learns to make short sentences out of them. The child's passive vocabulary contains several hundred words, thanks to which he understands the requests of adults well. A sign of ZRR may be an unwillingness to repeat words, a limited vocabulary, a lack of attempts to make sentences, and ignorance of the names of household items and body parts.
It should be understood that the standard norms of speech activity may vary depending on the gender of the child.
For girls, the deviation from normal indicators in one direction or another should not exceed 2-3 months. Boys usually learn to speak more slowly, so for them a period of 4-5 months is considered a normal deviation.
The most common cause of RDD in babies is hearing problems.
If the child does not distinguish sounds, he will not be able to learn to speak or will acquire problems with articulation and understanding of speech. Therefore, for any signs that your baby does not hear your voice and other sounds, contact your pediatrician and otolaryngologist. Diagnosable hearing loss can be either congenital or acquired as a result of an ear infection.
Psychological reasons and problems in the family often lead to speech delay.
Speech delay in a child of 2 years old can develop if adults pay little attention to the baby and almost do not talk to him. Similar to lack of attention, developmental gaps can also be caused by overprotection, because of which the baby does not feel confident enough. Any serious problems in the family circle have a negative impact on the development of speech, whether it is alcohol abuse, frequent quarrels or divorce of parents. If the reason for the ZRR is psychological, helping the baby start talking is quite simple, you just need to create healthy relationships in the family and
Often, a delay in speech development is associated with impaired functioning of the child's brain.
Causes can be maternal illness during pregnancy, prolonged, protracted or problematic labor, and birth trauma. ZRR sometimes develops against the background of a serious infection or severe trauma suffered by a baby at an early age. Moreover, the genetic predisposition to speech delay also affects the rate of mental and intellectual development of the baby.
Physiological abnormalities of the child will help to detect a neurologist and an otolaryngologist. If during the examination your baby has brain disorders or hearing loss, you can solve the problem of speech delay only by eliminating its cause. In other cases, parents need to spend more time with their child and use the right techniques for speech development.
At the end of the article, we have prepared for you a checklist "Delayed speech development in a child." Download it and find out the norms of speech development in children under 5 years of age, the signs of STDs and the algorithm of actions for STDs!
Consider ways to accelerate the speech development of the baby:
To help your child speak, educational games and activities should be part of your daily routine. Give massage, articulatory gymnastics and games for the development of fine motor skills time every day, only in this case you will quickly notice the results and save your child from the dangerous diagnosis of "delayed speech development".
The topic of our next article is "Newborn hygiene: caring for a newborn girl, cicatricial"
Is your baby's speech developing normally? How to find out that a child is lagging behind in speech development, and what to do if this is confirmed? Download the checklist and find out the norms for the development of speech in children under 5 years old, the signs of STDs and the algorithm of actions for STDs!
Delay speech child's development- this is a lag behind the age norm of speech development in children under the age of 4 years. Children with delayed speech development master speech skills in the same way as other children, but the age range is significantly shifted.
Speech therapists, defectologists, psychologists and neurologists are sounding the alarm about delayed speech development speech, focusing on the fact that the general psychological development of the child and the formation of the sphere of interpersonal interaction depend on it. The development of cognitive processes in a child also depends on the development of speech: memory, thinking, imagination, attention.
The reasons delays speech development in children :
Deviation from the proposed norms for 1-2 months (lead or lag) will also be the norm. If the child is lagging behind in several indicators at once, he does not have any skills at all, then you should contact a specialist or pick up educational games and exercises and engage with the baby regularly.
The stage of active speech is autonomous speech. The child uses amorphous root words, distinguishing them from words heard by adults. From 1.5 years old, with the same word, the child denotes a number of objects (“de” - tree, girl, do; “ku” - eat, chicken; “pa” - fell, stick, spatula.) The child still does not know how to generalize . For example, he understands the meaning of the words "chair", "table", "bed", but at the same time does not know the meaning of the word "furniture".
The beginning and end of the period of autonomous speech is associated with the beginning and end of the crisis of the first year of life. If a child lingers at this stage up to 3-5 years, this indicates a delay in mental development.
By the age of two, the child correlates familiar words with the objects depicted in the pictures (shows a bear, a ball, the sun, etc.).
Autonomous speech is replaced by "telegraphic". At first, these are monosyllabic combinations expressing the meaning of the whole sentence. The child uses words denoting objects related to his desire and interests. Since the child’s environment has its own individual set of such objects that he often meets, plays with, sees, then the set of words for different children is different. Having learned to use words in a certain situation, the child uses them in other situations, sometimes without noticing the substitution of the true meaning of the word. These are, as a rule, nouns, first feminine, later masculine, verbs, even adjectives in the singular. The child can already change words, using not only the present, but also the past tense of the verb, the plural of nouns.
Speech becomes connected. There are proposals, they become more and more complex. The child asks questions, changes intonation. There are still many grammatical errors in speech, it can be intermittent. There are many repetitions of words, hesitations in pronunciation, but by the age of 4 this passes. Vocabulary grows rapidly, by the age of 3 it can be 1000-1500 words! Often children create their own rules of speech, words ("fly").
Pronunciation of sounds by a child in the first eight months of life (babies pronounce various sounds “aaa”, “mmm”). If the baby is stubbornly silent, there is reason to think and turn to a neurologist in a timely manner.
Word comprehension appeal to a child aged 10-14 months. If the baby does not turn around when they are addressed to him, and uses crying to attract attention to himself.
Recognition of objects by ear. At the age of 14-18 months, children distinguish objects by ear and can show objects in the picture (“Where is the bear?”, “Where are the ears?”, “Where is the doll?”)
Execution of simple commands. At the age of 18-24 months, the baby is able to satisfy the request of an adult ("Take the ball and give it to me", "raise the cube and give it to me").
Pronunciation of words and phrases. At the age of 2-3 years, children pronounce individual words and form phrases (“mom, let's go for a walk”).
Pronunciation of sounds and words. At the age of 3-4 years, children can pronounce sentences consisting of a subject, a predicate and an object (“dad went to work”, “I'm going for a walk”). It is especially necessary to pay attention if most of the sounds are not pronounced correctly and at the age of 4 years the child is unable to form sentences.
Diagnostics delays speech development in a child occurs at a time when speech should already be developed, that is, at three to four years old, most often such a diagnosis is made at a time when time has been lost to catch up and correct this condition. Therefore, parents should not wait for the child to speak on his own, attention to the formation of speech should be paid from a very early age, especially if there are a number of indications for this (problems of intrauterine development of the fetus, difficult delivery, neurological indications).
Diagnosis delay speech child's development is put only on the basis of a comprehensive conclusion of specialist doctors: a psychologist, a neuropathologist, a speech therapist.
Before prescribing treatment in such a situation, the reason why the developmental delay occurred is clarified.
If the problem is psychological (lack of attention from adults, lack of need for conversation), then the best way to correct the situation would be additional stimulation of speech. Parents should pay maximum attention and bring an emotional aspect to the relationship with the child. There should also be classes with speech therapists and speech pathologists-defectologists.
If the problem is neurological in nature, and the delay in the development of speech occurs as a result of brain dysfunctions, the treatment is prescribed by a neuropathologist. Medicinal preparations of nootropic action (nootropil, cinarizine, cortexin, encephabol, etc.) are prescribed, their action is aimed at improving the blood circulation of the brain, at improving the integrative function of the brain.
Also, delayed speech development of a neurological nature is treated by the method of transcranial micropolarization. The areas of the brain responsible for the development of speech are exposed to a constant electric current of weak strength (10 times less than with electrophoresis), this activates the activity of these areas, normalizes the development of speech, and also normalizes the development of cognitive processes (memory and attention).
If a child has a speech development delay due to hearing impairment (deafness), then the child is assigned to a specialized children's