In recent years, according to the observations of speech therapists and defectologists, the number of children who begin to speak late has increased sharply.
Normally, speech (namely words and phrases, not babble) appears at the age of 2 years. Three-year-old children should already be able to speak in complete sentences with correct word agreement. If this does not happen, it is necessary to urgently contact specialists to identify the causes of delayed speech development and select the most effective correction program. The sooner you start correction, the faster you will achieve results. Experts divide the reasons for long-term lack of speech in children into internal and external. The first group is associated with the child’s health characteristics, the second group – with the environment in which he grows up. During the examination, first of all, they check whether everything is in order with the baby’s physical health.
Internal factors of speech absence in children
Check if your child hears normally
Children with partially or completely impaired hearing hardly perceive the sounds around them. Impaired hearing function most often occurs as a result of severe infections, prolonged otitis media, colds, and it can also occur as a result of birth trauma. If your child reacts only to loud, sharp sounds, does not hear whispers or even normal speech, he definitely needs to be shown to an otolaryngologist and have audiometry done.
Heredity
Developmental delays are often transmitted genetically, so if there has been a history of similar cases in the family, this is a cause for concern. Almost all hereditary disorders are transmitted in a more severe form. Therefore, do not listen to your relatives, they say, it will outgrow it, and go to specialists. Speech delay can also be tempo, since all children develop at different speeds. In this case, classes with a speech therapist will give the necessary impetus, and the baby will definitely speak. Important: the tempo delay allows a lag from the age norm only within 6 months.
CNS abnormalities
If a child has congenital or acquired pathologies of the nervous system, then his nerve cells stop developing, remaining young and immature. In this case, a central speech disorder, or alalia, occurs. Most alalik children begin to speak after long-term correction, but they often stutter.
Difficult pregnancy and traumatic birth
Long-term toxicosis, threat of miscarriage, Rhesus conflict, intrauterine meningitis and encephalitis, birth injuries, smoking and alcohol are the most common causes of underdevelopment of speech centers and the central nervous system.
Pathologies of the speech organs
If your baby has difficulty handling solid foods or is constantly drooling, he may have very weak maxillofacial muscles, which are an important part of the articulatory system. Also, normal speech development is hampered by a too short frenulum, malocclusion, or cleft palate. In this case, you need to contact a pediatric dentist and otolaryngologist.
Intellectual development disorder
Lack of speech at the age of 2-3 years can be a sign of delayed mental and mental development, autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome and other serious illnesses. Only a specialist can make a diagnosis, so it is important to be examined by a psychiatrist and speech pathologist-speech pathologist, who will determine the level of development of mental functions and intelligence. If during the examination it was possible to exclude problems with the baby’s physical and mental health, then the reasons for the speech delay should be sought in the environment in which he grows up.
Is it a problem if a child starts talking late?
Health
A child who starts talking late may not experience more behavioral and emotional problems than those who start talking very early, new research has found.
Children who are not as proficient in language by age 2 behave quite a bit worse at this age, but from 5 to 17 years of age their behavior is no different from that of their peers who begin to speak earlier. The new research appeared in July in the journal Pediatrics.
Children who start talking late, according to researcher Andrew Whitehouse
from
the University of Western Australia
, does not exhibit any other developmental delays.
“It turns out that late speech is not a risk factor at all, so these children don't have any future emotional or behavioral problems,
” Whitehouse said.
“ However, we have noticed that if speech problems continue into school age, these children often experience serious mental difficulties.”
Whitehouse's research was the first prospective study of language and behavior development. He and his colleagues studied children from a very young age and then followed them for 17 long years. These children were born between 1989 and 1991 in Perth, Australia. When they were 2 years old, parents had to fill out questionnaires that included when the child started talking, what vocabulary they had at a certain age, and asked about emotions and behavior. They answered the same questions when the children were 5, 8, 10, 14 and 17 years old.
The researchers looked at factors that might slow language development and influence behavior, including family income, mother's education, and the presence of a father in the family.
The results showed that children who had difficulty speaking by age 2 (about 15 percent of them) did have some emotional and behavioral problems. But by age 5, 142 children were no different from the other 1,245 children who began talking at the right time.
“We hypothesize that the behavioral and emotional problems seen at 2 years of age are related to psychological difficulties due to communication problems
, says Whitehouse.
“ However, once these children develop full speech, all problems disappear.”
Scientists plan to conduct more studies to determine which children are at risk of developing speech problems, which are associated with major psychological problems in childhood. For most children, it turns out, late speech is not a cause for concern.
“The best thing for parents in this situation is to place their children in an environment where they can quickly learn to speak. For example, you should play with children, constantly talk to them, ask questions, and so on."
“Whitehouse added.
Social reasons for lack of speech
The baby has an interlocutor who understands him perfectly
Speech therapists note that similar children, twins, and triplets begin to speak later than children who grow up alone or who have a large age difference with their brothers and sisters. Such kids, as a rule, have their own language, and they have enough communication with each other. They can lag behind the age norm within six months.
Bilingualism
When 2 or even 3 languages are constantly heard in a family, isolating individual words from the spoken speech is not easy even for an adult, let alone a child who is just learning to speak. There are situations when parents use one language on the street and another at home. Bilingual children need time to separate languages and learn to use them, which is why they begin to speak later than their peers. They also often have serious problems when mastering written language.
Passion for “smart” toys, tablet or TV
In the game, the child must play the main role; this helps to enrich his vocabulary, the development of speech, imagination, memory, and thinking. If he becomes a passive observer and only has to press a button and watch, then this will only harm him. Limit cartoons and games on the tablet, remove toys with electronic filling, give preference to regular bears and dolls, board games, drawing and modeling.
Nervous situation in the family
Kids are very sensitive to changes in the psychological climate in the family. If parents are often nervous, quarrel in the presence of a child, because of loud sounds, a restless environment, children instinctively try to attract attention to themselves as little as possible, withdraw into themselves, and have a hard time experiencing the cries of their mother and father. The development of speech and psyche suffers from this. This state can persist for a long time, even when all the storms in the family have long calmed down.
Overprotection
Children whose parents are too fussy are simply not interested in communicating with others. Why try to say something if there are parents and grandparents who are in a hurry to predict everyone's wishes? The solution here is simple: give the child more independence and do not rush to fulfill all requests expressed by facial expressions, babble or gestures.
Pedagogical neglect
You shouldn’t expect your child to learn something on his own. Yes, kids learn by imitating adults, but this does not mean that they should not be taught. Start your lessons from the first days of life. Speak to your child competently, pronouncing sounds clearly. Communicate, even if it seems to you that he “doesn’t understand anything.” Sing songs of babble words and individual sounds. Read fairy tales. Children must hear live speech. If you don’t work with your child every day, then you won’t hear a speech on time.
Dear parents, if your child has not spoken by the age of 2-2.5 years, urgently contact a specialist. The sooner speech is started, the faster the baby will catch up with his peers. Without speech there can be no normal development of a child's personality.
Why do modern children start speaking late?
– What is the reason for the fact that today’s children begin to speak late?
– Yes, unfortunately, in our time it is very rare to find a two-year-old child speaking in phrases. This may be due to various reasons, ranging from being constantly stuck on a smartphone to neurological disorders, which are present in most children nowadays. There are also many reasons for the development of neurological disorders: women’s health in general, the environment, etc. have deteriorated.
– Until what age can children not speak? Is there a norm?
– Already before the age of one year, vocalization appears, then babbling speech, words, phrases, etc. Don't believe those who say: "Wait until three years old and your child will speak on his own." He won't speak! And even if he does speak, his speech will be incomplete and different from the speech of his peers who are already speaking.
– When should parents sound the alarm?
– If your child does not speak at two years old, then you should contact both a neurologist and a speech therapist. There can be many reasons for “non-speaking”, and the sooner we identify them, the more positively this will affect the child’s development.
– Is speech development different for girls and boys?
– Girls usually start speaking a little earlier than boys, although there are no special norms based on gender. In any case, it is considered the norm when a child speaks at least a few conscious words at one year old, and uses phrasal speech at two years of age.
– At what age do children most often come to your center?
– Many bring children after three years. But if we work with the baby in a timely manner, we will get maximum results in the shortest possible time. The older the child who is brought to us, the longer we work on his problem. This applies specifically to the development of speech as such. If we are talking about correcting sound pronunciation, then work here can begin at 3.5-4 years.
It is best to bring children from the age of two; sometimes they bring babies who are only one or two weeks old - the babies cannot breastfeed. And in this case we can help too.
– Do you think that speech therapy problems have changed somehow in recent years?
– Let’s just say they were intensified by neurological disorders. There are a lot of children with perinatal damage to the central nervous system, with cerebral ischemia of varying severity, with so-called “autism spectrum disorders.”
– If a child starts speaking late, can this affect him in adulthood?
– This can be reflected already at school age, since such a child will be one step behind his classmates, and learning at school will be more difficult for him.
– Does attending kindergarten affect speech development?
– Of course, it affects if the child does not have neurological developmental disorders. Once in a group, a child has to learn to speak. It is at home that caring mother and father, grandparents understand the child with half a glance and half a sigh - the child does not have to particularly strain to speak. And parents should play with their child more often, talk, sing songs to him and read fairy tales.
– There is an opinion that after many years people will stop talking altogether. Do you think this could happen?
– I think that we, speech therapists, will try to prevent this problem.
