Many parents like to compare the achievements of their own child with the successes of other children, which is fundamentally wrong, since each person goes through an individual way of growing up. Therefore, you need to know the average, generally accepted norms of child development and be equal to them.
It’s not scary if up to three years the baby does not have the correct articulation, the sounds are replaced, their distortion. But if inaccuracies do not disappear at an older age, it is nothing but a delay in speech development. It cannot be ignored and, before it is too late, take urgent measures to eliminate it.
Delay in speech development can occur for many reasons:
- severe toxicosis of the mother during pregnancy;
- Diseases (including chronic ones) suffered by the mother when she carried the baby;
- chronic hypoxia of the baby in the womb;
- slight choking;
- even a small lesion of the nervous system with the occurring Rhesus-conflict between the mother and the fetus;
- injuries during childbirth;
- Infectious diseases carried by the child himself in infancy.
Speech disorders are successfully cured by the joint efforts of parents, speech therapists, psychologists and neuropathologists. The main thing is to recognize the problem in a timely manner. It is always easier to prevent a disease than to treat it, so parents should know what abnormalities in the child’s development indicate that a delay in speech development is possible in the future.
So, an appeal to a speech therapist is mandatory if:
1. During swallowing, sucking, the transition from liquid to solid foods, difficulties arise.
2. There is a psychomotor delay.
3. The dentist warned of anomalies in the jaw and teeth.
4. The movements of the lips and tongue are disturbed, as a result of which incorrect articulation is formed.
5. Saliva is constantly flowing.
6. The baby's mouth is constantly open.
Speech delay can be either partial or temporary, or almost irreversible. If with a well-developed hearing, a baby 3-5 years old does not speak at all or almost does not speak, you can talk about alalia. This deviation is caused by lesions in the left hemisphere of the brain of the areas responsible for speech. The child seeks to communicate, has normal hearing, articulatory apparatus, uses facial expressions and gestures. It can not be called mentally retarded. To cope with alalia, only an experienced speech therapist will help, who will draw up a correctional individual program for the child.
Fortunately, these are extremely rare cases. More often, the delay in speech development is caused by the slow development of the baby. Two or three years will pass and he will unexpectedly quickly catch up, become finally talkative.
Of course, waiting for three years to make sure that everything will be fine is also not worth it. It is better to consult a doctor. He will study the speech delay in a particular child, conduct research to exclude mental retardation, hearing defects or other diseases that may be the cause of the lag.
What can be done for the child at home so that the delay in speech development does not turn into a big psychological problem?
First of all, this is a joint reading of books, especially poetry, singing songs. It is necessary to name everything that is depicted in the drawings, ask the child to show one or another object, explain what it is. The kid should see that parents read a lot, understand how important this is. It is necessary to explain everything that surrounds the child, to accompany with words all actions, his and his own. Every day it is advisable to add at least a couple of new words to the baby’s dictionary, repeat them for better memorization. It is necessary to motivate him to action, to ensure that he himself talks about how he spent the day, what he did; so that he invents fairy tales, stories.
In any case, one cannot consider such a problem as a delay in speech development of unworthy attention and leave everything to chance. A child can cope with it and achieve significant success only with the help of loving and believing parents.