Delayed speech development

Delayed speech development is a complex of diagnoses, the common symptom of which is a lag in speech development from peers.

The content of the article:
Causes of speech development delay
Signs of delayed speech development of the child
Diagnosis of speech development delay
Correctional and developmental work with delayed speech development
Prognosis and prevention of speech development delay
Delayed speech development
As a result of numerous studies, it was found that today 25% of children have speech development delay. While in the mid-70s of the last century, only 4% of children of the same age group were diagnosed with such a diagnosis. This means that during this time, this pathology has become diagnosed in children 6 times more often. Moreover, such a picture is observed all over the world.

The term “delayed speech development in a child” is often used in medical practice. Speech therapists claim that this is a very serious pathology.

With a delay, speech still develops, although with a delay. All speech skills appear somewhat later than the rest. And although failure in speech development is a temporary phenomenon, it can still have a negative impact on the baby, since at the same time psychological development is inhibited, the process of gaining experience in interpersonal relationships and communication slows down. In addition, the delay in speech development has a bad effect on the cognitive skills of the baby. Speech has a great influence on the development of imagination, memory and general thinking.

This pathology is diagnosed in children under three years of age who have a very poor vocabulary or cannot speak at all. Children with psychorechoic developmental delay cannot make long sentences, they almost never ask questions. The doctor can confirm the presence of this pathology only after a comprehensive diagnosis. Unfortunately, pathology is most often diagnosed when time is lost, so parents should carefully monitor their baby.

Causes of speech development delay
Speech has its own norms of development and formation. Usually a child tries to talk in the second year of his life. Until the age of two, he only observes the world around him, studies it and tries to remember everything. By the age of two, all the accumulated information is processed by brain cells, and the muscles of the speech apparatus are strengthened, which makes it possible for the baby to speak his thoughts aloud and thus express his emotions. Although there are exceptions to all the rules, including in speech development. Therefore, in some cases, the child starts talking later. There are several reasons for this phenomenon:

weak development of the muscles surrounding the mouth, or weak muscle tone of the face. This may be indicated by a preference for soft food, constant loss of food from the oral cavity, excessive saliva. This disorder is more often observed in babies who stopped breastfeeding too early or were not breastfed at all;
poor concentration of auditory attention. With this pathology, the child cannot understand sentences consisting of a large number of words, he does not hear background noises;
hearing disorders. This is one of the most common factors that provoke a delay in speech development in a child. Hearing defects can also negatively affect mental abilities. Therefore, the main thing is to detect the problem in time and not to miss the most appropriate period for activating the functions of the auditory canal leading to the area of the brain responsible for hearing.;
lack of demand for speech. This often happens when there is little communication with the child or they try to find out all the wishes of the baby in advance. As a result, the child does not need to express his emotions and say anything with words.;
genetic predisposition. In this case, the nerve fibers responsible for speech are slowly maturing in children;
injuries and brain tissue damage received during childbirth or in the first few months of a baby’s life;
if the parents talk too fast, the child does not have time to understand the meaning of what is said, and after a while he stops trying to understand what he is being told;
congestion of the room with noise. The constant work of the TV, talking on the phone and just loud communication become the reason that children stop attaching importance to words and even incorrectly repeat the speech they heard;
if the parents speak 2 languages;
if the child’s speech requirements are too high, the desire to speak may disappear;
diseases of the nervous system and mental diseases;
severe mental injuries sustained in early childhood;
abuse of alcohol by parents;
oxygen starvation during intrauterine development;
if a woman has suffered any illness or poisoning during pregnancy, then her baby also has an increased risk of speech delay in the future;
poor eyesight;
pathology of the brain.
It is important to know that the treatment of speech development delay can be greatly delayed and complicated if the causes of the pathology of the child’s speech are not identified, and the provoking factor will continue to have its negative impact. Therefore, children with this deviation are recommended to undergo a full examination. Only in this way will the speech therapist be able to diagnose as accurately as possible.

Signs of delayed speech development of the child
Initially, all newborns do not know how to talk. At this time, interaction with others is carried out with the help of various tones of crying. And only after some time the child begins the formation and development of speech, which goes through several stages. All of them are of great importance. If one stage is incomplete, the child will not be able to move on to the next. Therefore, parents should notice the difficulties in time.

With normal development, the baby is already buzzing at 2-5 months. From 3 to 5 — tries to pronounce different syllables, gradually moving into the period of unrelated speech. From the age of 11 months, the child tries to pronounce his first words. At the age of 2-3, he begins to build the first primitive sentences. From the age of three, he should be able to build replicas, create small texts, memorize and retell short poems.

The following symptoms usually indicate a delay in speech development:

at the age of 4 months or more, the baby does not respond to the words that are spoken to him, does not smile at his parents;
a child of 9 months or more has no babbling;
a child at 1.5 years old cannot say the simplest words, does not know his name, the names of objects that surround him, does not understand elementary commands (such as “come to me” or “take”);
at 2.5 years old, a child knows few words, he remembers the names of objects poorly, does not even create the simplest replicas of 2 words;
at the age of three, a child talks in such a way that even his parents do not understand him well. He does not compose a sentence of even 3 words on his own, but only repeats the words he hears from adults or from the TV. Such children do not understand what they are being told, they pronounce words slowly or, conversely, too quickly, “swallow” the endings of words. They chew food badly, they can choke even on small pieces, their mouth is constantly open.
Every parent should pay attention to these signs, and if they occur, immediately contact a speech therapist. However, you need to know that the norms of speech development can vary greatly. It is not recommended to compare your child with the rest of the children. The formation of speech is an individual process. It is also important to take into account that girls start talking a little earlier than boys. Although speech delays in the latter are much less common.

If a child at the age of three understands what his parents tell him and fulfills all their requests, if he does not have mental disorders, then there is no need to worry. If he has only problems with speech, then this may be a manifestation of a special willingness to form speech. It is necessary to visit a doctor if the child absolutely cannot talk after three years or if his speech is slurred.

Diagnosis of speech development delay
With a full examination of patients with speech delay, the following measures may be necessary:

assessment by a surdologist of the child’s hearing abilities and, if there are any violations, identification of them;
conducting age testing to determine the degree of psychomotor development, based on indicators of early speech development and the Bailey scale, which is used to determine the degree of development of infants;
conducting a conversation with parents to assess their communication style with the child;
assessment of motor skills of facial muscles in case there are difficulties with breastfeeding and the child cannot repeat the movements of the tongue;
assessment of speech reconstruction and comprehension;
finding out by the doctor how parents stimulate the child’s speech development, how they bring him up, how they and the surrounding people teach the baby to speak.
During the diagnosis of the disease, it is important to find the factor that provoked it. To do this, you will have to be additionally examined by a child psychologist, as well as by doctors such as a neurologist and a psychiatrist. It may also be necessary to conduct studies showing the features of the functioning of the child’s brain — ECG, ECHO-EG and MRI.

Correctional and developmental work with delayed speech development
In order to develop the child’s speech, speech therapists use both drug therapy and psychological and educational methods. At the same time, the best results can be achieved if both methods are used.

To correct speech development, the doctor may prescribe various medications to the child that help restore speech. For this purpose, sectional vitamin complexes and drugs that improve the nutrition of brain neurons can be used.

For the correction of speech development, magnetotherapy and electroreflexotherapy are usually performed. The mechanism of their action is to restore the work of the brain regions that are responsible for diction, speech, intelligence and verbal memory. Unfortunately, electroreflexotherapy also has contraindications (such as mental disorders, convulsive and epileptic seizures).

Hippotherapy and dolphin therapy can be used to enhance the effect of drug therapy.

However, all these methods will not give the desired result if additional work is not carried out with the teacher. Working with a defectologist will help eliminate or weaken the deterioration of the course of the disease, prevent the appearance of secondary pathologies and difficulties. During the sessions, the doctor can conduct play sessions, compiled individually for each child, use various means of rehabilitation.

Delayed speech development in children is also treated with therapeutic massage. During this procedure, the doctor affects certain points of the body. Some patients are prescribed speech therapists probe massage Novikova.

In addition, the defectologist and parents at home should perform various game exercises, the purpose of which is to strengthen the facial muscles, improve the mobility of the tongue and hearing aid. To achieve the effect, you can perform facial gymnastics, learn tongue twisters, perform exercises that develop fine motor skills of the hands. There are a lot of such programs. They can be selected after consulting with a doctor, and constantly engage with the baby.

During treatment, parents should help specialists in every possible way, and not rely only on doctors. With this type of children, you need to work not every day, but every hour — which requires a lot of time and patience.

Prognosis and prevention of speech development delay
If they seek medical help in time, then such children are already catching up with their peers by the age of 5-7.

In case of untimely treatment , the following complications may occur in a child:

lagging behind peers in mental and mental development;
the increase in this difference with age;
problems with learning at school. In some cases, the child may be transferred to an auxiliary school.
Therefore, it is always easier to prevent pathology than to treat it. Children from an early age should be taught to express desires, opinions, and show their emotions. All this should be fully carried out by the parents of the baby. It is necessary to contact the child often and for a long time in order to develop speech, encourage when achieving results.

It is necessary to start carrying out such work even before the baby is born, during the period of embryonic development. Tell us about your mood, about how your day went, about the things you bought for him, about how beautiful and bright they are. All these conversations contribute to strengthening the bond between the baby and mom, positively affect the development of immunity and speech.

As often as possible, turn on pleasant calm music (preferably classical). It has a good effect on the development of all parts of the brain.

To develop a child’s speech, he needs to read books, study poems with him. Fine motor skills of the hands play a huge role in the development of the baby’s speech. Therefore, the child needs to be taught to draw, sculpt figures from plasticine, play finger games with him. All this can be done at home. Even if a child under the age of three has no problems with speech, you still need as much communication as possible to prevent problems in the future.

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