The child is late to speak

If you are worried that your child is not starting to talk, first make sure that he can hear. We guarantee the reliability of this test.

Speech development of a child. After the first few months of life, linguistic (speech) differentiation occurs. At this time, Chinese babbling children are quite clearly distinguished from European babbling infants. At the age of up to a year, such "babblers" already produce combinations of sounds that are similar to words, but have no meaning

At about one year of age, a child can pronounce a few words quite meaningfully. At one and a half years, the child begins to use two-word combinations, such as "Daddy, go." At two years of age, the child already constructs sentences from three parts - a subject, a verb, and an object - "I want some pie." By 3 1/2 years, the child has practically mastered thinking, language, abstract thinking, and elements of inference; his vocabulary at this time is about 1000 words. He can construct sentences such as - "I think I'll give her a piece of cake, otherwise she'll be angry." During the rest of his life, few things can compare in significance with the intellectual and linguistic activity of these years. The child's subsequent linguistic development is devoted to conceptually smaller tasks, such as mastering the subjunctive mood, expanding his vocabulary, and amusing himself with contradictory hypotheses: "If I hadn't thrown my hat on the ground, I probably would have been given a piece of pie."

The time parameters of speech development in a child are very variable, so first of all it is important to understand - what is a deviation from the norm?

Vocabulary. If a child reaches the age of 3 with a vocabulary of less than 50 words, the following disorders can be suspected.

• Speech dyspraxia, especially if speech is telegraphic, slurred, and negative behavioral reactions (frustration) occur.
• Expressive dysphasia.
• Audiopremotor syndrome - the child cannot correctly express sounds that he hears correctly due to a violation of motor control of the larynx and breathing. Instead of babbling, the child is silent, he cannot speak, stumbling, or sing.
• Respiratory-laryngeal dysfunction (dysphonia due to abnormal vibration of the vocal cords). The voice is loud and rough.
• Congenital aphonia (rare): the voice is weak and “thin”, although a lot of effort is spent to produce it.

Clarity of speech. By 2 1/2 years, the mother should be able to understand the child's speech throughout the day. If this is not the case, then the following may be suspected.

• Articular dyspraxia (the light consonants "b" and "m" are labial; and "d" is lingual, this is the phonetic component of "babbling"). This is the most common problem in the development of clear speech. Boys are more often affected (ratio 3:1). The most likely cause is that the frenulum of the tongue is too short, so the child has difficulty pronouncing sounds that require raising the tongue ("d" and "s"). In such cases, either speech exercises or surgical intervention on the frenulum of the tongue help.
• Audiopremotor syndrome or respiratory-laryngeal dysfunction (see above).

Understanding speech. By 2 1/2 years, a child should understand speech addressed to him. If he does not understand it, then one should suspect:

• deafness. If hearing is impaired (for example, a loss of 25-40 decibels), then one should consider the possibility of secretory otitis media. Even greater hearing loss is probably sensorineural in nature;
• cognitive impairment;
• deprivation (lack of this ability).

Other causes of speech disorders. There are congenital and acquired causes of speech disorders.

Acquired:

• after menipgoencephalitis;
• after a head injury;
• For Landau-Klefiner syndrome (progressive loss of speech and epilepsy).

Congenital:

• Klinefelter syndrome;
• galactosemia, histidinemia;
• auditory agnosia

Treatment of speech disorders. You should contact doctors as early as possible and begin treatment in preschool years.