Signs of abnormal speech development in a 3-year-old child
- The child does not turn to adults with questions or for help, does not use speech, and as a result “does everything himself”
- Vocabulary is limited; he cannot name objects known to him.
- The child does not have the desire to repeat words and phrases after adults, or he does it reluctantly.
- The child communicates equally with familiar and unfamiliar people.
- The child’s speech is not understandable to others, and he tries to supplement it with gestures, or shows indifference to whether other people understand him.
- The speech lacks simple sentences “subjects, predicates, objects”; does not understand simple stories about events in the past or future.
- The child is not attentive enough to his speech errors or does not notice them. Asking the child to correctly repeat what was said does not produce results.
- Does not answer simple questions: “who?”, “what?”, “where?”, cannot follow simple requests and instructions.
- The child’s speech lags significantly behind the level of speech development of his peers and age standards.
In order for assistance to a child with a delay in speech development to be effective, an integrated approach and coordinated work of different specialists (doctors, speech therapists, psychologists), as well as the active participation of parents, are necessary. It is important that these joint efforts are aimed at early detection and timely correction of speech disorders in children.
Constant contact with specialists (psychologist, neurologist, pediatrician, speech therapist), conducting their consultations over time is a necessary condition for the success of the treatment.
Speech problems in children 3.5-4.5 years old
For a child of this age, certain speech deficiencies are natural. For example, young children do not necessarily have to pronounce absolutely all the sounds of a language correctly. They do not have enough life experience, so their vocabulary is not particularly large. The thinking of such children has not yet acquired systematicity and consistency, so they cannot form complex phrasal speech. But nevertheless, a 3.5-4.5 year old child should already be able to communicate in simple phrases and well understand the speech of the people around him.
Based on the state of their speech, your child may belong to one of three groups:
- Non-verbal or late-talking children. When a child has recently begun to speak, he speaks very incomprehensibly - in short, two-three word, incomplete phrases (that is, he misses words in a sentence, which he can replace with gestures). Such a child also has a very poor (actually few words) vocabulary.
- Children who speak unintelligibly. The speech of such children makes a more favorable impression than in the previous case. The child uses phrases and has a fairly decent vocabulary, but nevertheless his speech is incomprehensible to others. Due to deficiencies in pronunciation, it can be difficult to discern how competently a child speaks.
- Children who speak clearly. In such children, speech developed in a timely manner, they speak competently, in correctly constructed phrases, and detailed sentences. In their speech there may be various violations of sound pronunciation, which, however, do not make it incomprehensible. If a child began to speak recently, but his speech is quite understandable, detailed and well-formed, he can be classified in this group.
Speech problems in children over 4.5-5 years old
To understand what speech problems a child of a given age has, you need to check with him:
- Speech exhalation;
- Sound pronunciation;
- Speech hearing;
- Speech development of the child as a whole;
- Mobility of speech muscles;
- The structure of the speech organs.
A child’s speech can be understandable or incomprehensible:Clear speech. Your child speaks clearly and can be easily understood. He constructs normal, detailed sentences. His speech sounds competent, he knows a lot of words. By hearing, you can determine that he does not pronounce some sounds.
Incomprehensible speech. The child speaks unintelligibly. Strangers don't always understand. Due to the slurred nature of his speech, it is difficult to determine whether he speaks correctly (whether he uses word endings, prepositions, etc. correctly). The child may have a small vocabulary. He speaks in short, incomplete sentences and does not pronounce a large number of sounds. A child may have all of the speech deficiencies mentioned or only some of them.
What speech deficiencies in your child should concern you?
Speech. Speech development in children of preschool and primary school age. What speech deficiencies in your child should concern you? Sound pronunciation disorders. Disturbances in the rhythm and tempo of speech. Hearing impairment and related speech disorders. Underdevelopment of speech and loss of existing speech. Dyslalia, dysarthria, stuttering, alalia, aphasia.
If a child at 2-2.5 years old does not speak at all or says few words, this usually causes concern for parents, and they consult a doctor.
Well, what if the child talks a lot, but poorly? It is not uncommon for a 3-4 year old child to speak so indistinctly that only his mother can understand him. It happens that at this age children do not pronounce certain sounds, replace some sounds with others, or their rhythm and tempo of speech is disturbed - they speak chokingly, very quickly or, conversely, draw out words, etc. Such violations, as a rule, are of little concern parents, and they tend to explain it by saying that “small children are generally difficult to understand!”
Of course, in the early stages of speech development, the articulation of sounds in all children is imperfect: they distort, omit or replace many sounds. However, this can be considered the “norm” for children no older than 2.5-3 years. If articulation defects are observed in older children and persist, measures must be taken to eliminate them. When these defects are very pronounced in young children, it is necessary to pay attention to them - whether they are associated with some kind of disorder.
Currently, speech disorders have been studied quite well, and many of them can be successfully treated. For a wide range of parents, detailed knowledge of this area is unlikely to be necessary, but a general understanding of it is likely to be useful. Parents, for example, should know what constitutes a deviation from the correct development of speech, which refers to speech disorders. This will help them contact a speech disorder specialist in time, and the defect can be corrected sooner. Remember: the more persistent a speech disorder has become, the more difficult it is to treat.
There are four main groups of speech disorders:
1. Violations of sound pronunciation.
2. Violations of the rhythm and tempo of speech.
3. Speech disorders associated with hearing impairment.
4. Underdevelopment of speech or loss of previously existing speech.
Sound pronunciation disorders.
Sound pronunciation disorders include tongue-tiedness (also called dyslalia) and dysarthria - slurred speech.
Tongue-tiedness is expressed in the absence of some sounds (the child misses them in words), in the distortion of sounds (the child pronounces them incorrectly) and in the replacement of one sound with another.
Tongue-tiedness can be functional or mechanical. With functional tongue-tiedness, hearing and the structure of the articulatory apparatus are normal, and the causes of speech disorders lie in the weakness of the nervous processes occurring in the brain. The mechanical form of tongue-tiedness is caused by congenital abnormalities in the structure of the oral and nasal cavities (lips, teeth, palate, nasal passages, etc.). With these lesions, not only the pronunciation of sounds suffers, but very often there are also disturbances in voice timbre, speech rhythm, etc.
Functional tongue-tiedness (omission, distortion, replacement of sounds) in the second or third year of a child’s life can be considered a natural phenomenon. There is even a term: “physiological dyslalia.” If the pronunciation defect persists even at an older age, then you need to contact a speech therapist.
The most defects are observed in the pronunciation of sounds that have a difficult method of articulation. Moreover, the more complex the articulation of sound, the more defects there will be. More often than others, defects occur in the pronunciation of the sounds “r” and “l” (the so-called lingual sounds), somewhat less often - in the pronunciation of the sounds “s”, “z”, “ts” (whistles), “sh”, “zh”, "ch", "sch" (hissing).
Violations of the pronunciation of the sound "r" are extremely diverse. This is the absence of “r”: “uka” (hand), “koova” (cow), “sha” (ball); burry "r", nasal "r": the sound "r" is replaced by the nasal "ng". Very often the sound “r” is replaced with the sounds “l”, “t”, “d”, “g”, “th”. For example, "luka" or "yuka" (hand), "kolova" or "kojowa" (cow), etc.
Another difficult sound is "l". The shortcomings of its pronunciation are almost as numerous as those of the "r" sound. Here, too, the absence of sound is noted: “apa” (paw), “oshka” (spoon), “yudi” (people); there is a “bilabial” or labiodental “l”: instead of “l” a sound is heard, intermediate between “u” and “v” - “uampa” or “vampa” (lamp), “uoshka” or “voshka” (spoon) ; nasal "l", when the sound "l" is replaced by the nasal sound "ng". There are also more rare violations, for example, the sound “l” is replaced by the sounds “r”, “d”, “n”, “th”, “v”, etc.
In cases where a sound is absent or is not articulated correctly, specially selected exercises are used to establish the correct alignment of the articulatory organs for pronouncing this sound. If there is a persistent replacement of one sound by another, this indicates that the child not only has insufficient articulatory function, but also poor discrimination of speech sounds. In such cases, along with exercises to correct articulation, exercises are also carried out to recognize sounds - the education of phonemic hearing.
We do not present here the exercises that are given to children to eliminate defects in the pronunciation of various sounds, because in each individual case the speech therapist takes into account the degree of the violation, its features and gives instructions in accordance with this. Under no circumstances should you try to correct your child’s pronunciation deficiencies yourself - you cannot do this without the help of a specialist (this applies not only to pronunciation disorders, but also to all other disorders, which will be discussed further).
Mechanical dyslalia is a more severe disorder: after all, the correct structure of the jaws, teeth, tongue, nasopharynx is necessary not only for the correct formation of speech, but also for proper nutrition, breathing, etc. If these functions are disrupted, the child often gets sick, his body weakens . With mechanical dyslalia, not only articulation often suffers, but also the understanding of the speech of other people, since these processes are closely interrelated.
If the structure of the lips is incorrect, they are not mobile enough, and, of course, the pronunciation of the labial sounds “p”, “b”, “m” and the labial-dental sounds “f” and “v” will suffer first of all. Poor lip mobility also affects the pronunciation of other sounds.
If there is an irregularity in the structure of the teeth or their absence, the articulation of sounds formed with the participation of the front teeth suffers - “s”, “z”, “ts”, etc.
The most common deviation in the structure of the jaws is an incorrect bite. Occlusion is the corresponding arrangement of the teeth of the upper cavity in relation to the teeth of the lower cavity. With the correct structure of the jaws, the upper incisors should slightly cover the lower ones, while the lateral molars close together. With an incorrect bite, the upper or lower jaw can protrude forward, a so-called cross bite occurs, etc. An incorrect bite disrupts chewing and breathing (the habit of breathing through the mouth develops). All these deviations in the structure of the jaws can lead to articulation disorders, which we talked about when describing functional dyslalia, in addition, additional sounds are often produced: lisping, smacking, etc.
Defects in the structure of the jaws and nasopharynx affect the shape of the face, and children painfully experience their physical disabilities.
Treatment should begin with an attempt to correct the existing physical defect. To do this, you need to contact a specialist in maxillofacial surgery as soon as possible. At the same time, you need to consult with a speech therapist about what exercises the child should do to make sounds.
Among the deviations in the development of the facial skeleton, congenital cleft palate (complete - along the entire length or incomplete) is often found. Currently, most experts recognize the need for early surgical intervention in these cases. Lip plastic surgery can be performed already in the first hours of a child’s life. For cleft palate, a prosthesis is made to cover the defect; The baby will then be able to suck. In the future, such a prosthesis will help the correct development of sound articulation. In the second year, it is already possible to undergo plastic surgery of the palate.
Parents should not hesitate whether to contact a surgeon; they should not postpone this until a later time, “when the baby grows up.” Speech therapy classes are of great importance, since it is very important for such children to establish correct breathing and sound of the voice, and to teach them the articulation of sounds. For cleft palates, speech therapy sessions should begin before surgery and continue after surgery.
Quite often there is a violation of the pronunciation of the sounds “r”, “sh”, “zh”, “ch”, “sch” when the hyoid ligament (“frenulum”) is shortened. The question of whether to trim the frenulum is decided depending on how much the range of tongue movements is reduced. Many experts are categorically against surgical treatment and recommend vibration massage and special tongue exercises.
This group of diseases also includes dysarthria, or a disorder of articulate speech, which occurs due to brain injuries, inflammatory processes or cerebrovascular accidents. All movements, including articulatory ones, are very slow and awkward. Chewing and swallowing are difficult, so drooling is common. The range of movements of the tongue and lips is limited: the child cannot stretch out his lips, bare his teeth, or inflate his necks. The voice is quiet, dull, and sometimes disappears completely. The pace of speech is slow, with uneven pauses.
The entire course of speech development in dysarthria is delayed, the period of babbling is often absent, by the age of 2-3 years individual words appear, and the child begins to pronounce phrases (short, usually incorrectly constructed) only by the age of 5-6 years. Later, the vocabulary increases, speech develops, but it remains illegible, blurred and monotonous. Some speech pathologists believe that children with dysarthria are mentally retarded. The majority find that these children have only a delay in the development of intelligence associated with motor and speech disorders. When their condition improves, such children can study well and exhibit normal mental abilities.
Children with dysarthria need observation by a neurologist (at least periodically). Since this disorder is always the result of a brain disease, it requires long-term and patient treatment. The same long and patient work should be carried out to correct speech defects - of course, under the guidance of a speech therapist.
Disturbances in the rhythm and tempo of speech.
Disorders of the rhythm and tempo of speech are of two types: non-convulsive and convulsive.
Often, children's speech becomes incomprehensible and unintelligible due to the fact that its tempo is disturbed: it either slows down very much or speeds up very much - these are non-convulsive disorders.
Slowing down speech is based on an increase in the inhibitory process. There may be a drawn out, slow pronunciation of sounds in a word, pauses between them - the child pronounces words almost syllable by syllable ("vi...zu...so...ba...a ku..."); there may be lengthening of pauses between words (“give...me...your hand...”). Speech is monotonous, drawn-out, causing tension and fatigue in those listening, but the children themselves usually do not notice their defect.
Treatment consists of the use of tonics, therapeutic exercises and speech therapy rhythm classes.
The acceleration of the rate of speech is associated with the predominance of the process of excitation in the child. The faster rate of speech is combined with the fast pace of all motor reactions. When these children are excited, there is even greater acceleration of speech, swallowing, rearrangement of syllables, etc.
Treatment for such children consists primarily of reducing their general excitability (with the help of medications, physical therapy).
Imitation plays an important role in the development of speech rate disorders. Therefore, if someone in your family has a violation of the rhythm and tempo of speech (and this is usually the case), then this person must also be treated, otherwise the child will have relapses all the time.
Stuttering is a disorder of the rhythm and tempo of speech with convulsive spasm of the speech muscles. It manifests itself in two forms - the so-called developmental stuttering and reactive stuttering.
Developmental stuttering is observed in early childhood, when the child still speaks poorly and has many articulation defects. If they talk to the baby at this time, teach him difficult words and phrases, then he may begin to stutter. So, Yura P., at the age of 2 years 10 months, recited a lot of poems, sang songs, constantly involved his parents in the conversation and made everyone laugh by using such “adult” words as “unthinkable”, “agreed”, etc. And then one day, Telling his mother how he and his grandmother were walking and eating ice cream, Yura suddenly stumbled on this word: “M-mo... mm-mo..” - and then began to speak with a stutter.
Sometimes parents cannot indicate a specific moment when stuttering began - it develops gradually.
The development of this form of stuttering is based on overexcitation of the speech areas of the child’s brain. Therefore, the first measure should be to stop all conversations with the child. You need to calm the baby down, not allow him to talk, and limit your conversation with him.
Sometimes this “silence mode” corrects the situation within 7-10 days. Sometimes the disorder turns out to be quite persistent. As soon as a child begins to stutter, you need to contact a speech therapist and strictly follow all his instructions.
Reactive stuttering (which develops as a reaction to some strong influence) is most often the result of fear, mental trauma (severe conflicts in the family) or debilitating long-term illnesses.
Usually all children experience fright at some point, suffer more or less severe infections, and witness conflicts in the family. However, stuttering occurs only in a relatively small proportion of children. This is why doctors believe that children who have a predisposition to stutter begin to stutter—obviously, children with some constitutional weakness of the nervous system. Indeed, in children who stutter, you can usually see other signs of a neurotic state: poor appetite, restless sleep, night terrors, urinary incontinence, etc.
Specialists in the treatment of stuttering, for example S.S. Lyapidevsky, believe that the development of stuttering is always based on a weakened cortex: against this background, strong negative influences cause a breakdown of nervous activity - the development of neurosis, one of the manifestations of which will be stuttering.
In the treatment of stuttering, along with speech therapy, medical assistance is also necessary. A child who stutters must be under the supervision of a neurologist. Experience shows that the most successful treatment for stuttering is inpatient treatment.
We have already said that here we will not touch upon either the treatment methods or the nature of the exercises that are used in the treatment of certain speech disorders, so that parents do not try to start treating the child without the advice of a speech therapist and a doctor. But we can talk about preventing the development of stuttering in children - this is exactly what families and child care institutions should take care of.
In calm, balanced children, stuttering is observed extremely rarely, which means that special attention should be paid to the so-called nervous children - they are at risk of developing speech neuroses, and primarily stuttering.
For such children, it is especially important to establish a firm routine, ensure that they get enough sleep and do not become overtired. It is necessary to create a calm environment for them in the family, kindergarten or school: children experience equally hard both rough treatment and quarrels and conflicts between loved ones.
Regarding small children, you also need to be careful in speech loads: if the child is excitable, whiny, sleeps restlessly, etc., you should not read or tell him too much, you should not rush to teach him difficult words, complex phrases, especially if he has He also has a “physiological tongue-tiedness.” Against the background of unpracticed articulation, an abundance of new difficult words will easily lead to a “disruption” of nervous activity.
From our point of view, preventing stuttering in nervous children is an extremely important task. If parents are forced to comply with all these conditions when trouble happens - the child begins to stutter, then, really, it is easier to take the necessary measures in advance and try to protect the baby from developing speech neurosis.
It should be kept in mind that stuttering often returns after treatment. The reasons for the relapse of stuttering are the same as the reasons that originally caused it: conflicts in the family and school, overwork, debilitating infections. Consequently, relapses of stuttering can be prevented if people around them try to create a calm environment for the child. (According to Professor S.S. Lyapidevsky, in the long term after treatment, good speech remains in 28% of children, speech deteriorates somewhat in 26.2%, a significant deterioration occurs in 25.3%, and stuttering resumes in 20.4% of children. This means , in 54.2% of patients the speech state turned out to be quite satisfactory even in the long term after treatment).
Hearing impairment and related speech disorders.
Until now, we have talked about speech dysfunctions in which the child’s hearing does not suffer. Meanwhile, even a slight deterioration in hearing leads to a delay in speech development. If there is significant hearing loss during this period, the child’s speech will not develop at all.
When they want to find out whether a small child can hear, they first of all check how he reacts to sounds of medium volume and loud ones: talking, screaming, ringing. If the baby does not turn around at these sounds, then with a high degree of probability we can say that he is deaf. However, if you slammed the door or clapped your hands and the child gave a reaction, this is not at all proof that he has hearing, since it will be a reaction to the vibration of the air, and not to the sound.
For older children - about five months or more - a good test is this: the child is given two identical sounding toys - two pipes, two rubber birds, two barrel organs, etc. One of them is working and sounds, the other is damaged. If a child can hear, he always chooses a sounding toy, but a deaf child plays with both toys or ignores both.
At the slightest suspicion of hearing loss in a child, you should consult a doctor. Children from about 5 years of age have the opportunity to very accurately determine the extent of hearing loss using a special device - an audiometer. An audiometer allows you to find out what sound vibrations and at what strength the child perceives. (The frequency of sound vibrations per second is determined in special units - hertz, and its strength - in decibels.)
When examining hearing using an audiometer, a curve is drawn: the sound frequencies within which the patient hears are plotted horizontally, and the strength of sounds at which they are perceived is plotted vertically. Hearing loss is characterized by both of these indicators.
Typically, people speak at a volume (that is, the intensity of sounds) of 20-40 decibels (db), and the frequency of sound vibrations ranges from 250 to 2000 hertz (Hz) - this is called the “speech frequency zone”.
Deafness does not mean that the ear does not detect any sounds: there are always some remnants of hearing. But the trouble is that they can only be perceived with a very high sound intensity - 80-100 dB (it must be said that 80 dB is a scream, and 100 dB is the fortissimo of a large orchestra).
Depending on what remains of the child’s hearing is, further work is carried out with him.
The age at which a child loses hearing is very important. The earlier this happened, the more severely it affects speech. Children who were born deaf and lost their hearing in the second or third year of life will be mute; they cannot master speech without special training. But the speech apparatus of these children is usually fine, they do not have damage to the speech parts of the brain, therefore, with proper training, the mental development of these children will be normal, and later they will develop sound speech.
Children who lost their hearing at 5-6 years old lose speech only in rare cases, and those who became deaf at 7-11 years old retain their speech completely.
Difficulties in mastering speech arise even when hearing is reduced by 15-20 dB - such cases are called not deafness, but hearing loss. These children also require special treatment and training.
Hearing loss and even deafness do not at all indicate that the child is doomed to mental retardation. One can cite a large number of examples where, despite severe hearing loss approaching deafness, children were able to study in a public school. But these are the cases when parents turned to a speech therapist early and worked hard with the children. Parents receive very detailed instructions and teach the child (learning with him) visual perception of speech ("reading" the facial expressions of a speaking person) and the perception of tactile-vibrational sensitivity (pronouncing vowels and voiced consonants is accompanied by vibration of the larynx, which can be felt by hand). This requires a lot of time and effort on the part of the family, but ensures the correct development of the child. Approximately the same work is carried out with deaf children, but their education, as a rule, is carried out in special schools.
The main thing that I would like to emphasize here is that with timely access to a speech therapist and systematic training, a hard-of-hearing and deaf child will grow up to be a full-fledged person, so parents should not lose heart. You need to set yourself and your child up for calm, long-term work, which, as a rule, ends in success.
Underdevelopment of speech and loss of existing speech.
Underdevelopment of speech activity (alalia) is either a consequence of the fact that the maturation of nerve cells in the speech zone of the left hemisphere is delayed for some reason, or the result of early damage to these cells due to infections, intoxications, birth injuries, or injuries shortly after birth. Loss of speech (aphasia) occurs with focal lesions of the speech areas of the cerebral cortex in children or adults whose speech has already been formed.
Alalia is divided into motor, when the child’s own speech suffers, and sensory, when understanding of other people’s speech is impaired. Usually, in practice, only a predominance of motor or sensory impairments is identified in a child. Motor and sensory alalia in its pure form almost never occurs.
In children suffering from alalia, speech develops late, the vocabulary is replenished slowly, and they are used incorrectly in speech. The child often looks for the desired sequence of sounds in a word, but cannot find it: this leads to multiple repetitions, rearrangement of syllables, and distortion of words. “Muneka...magak.ch...magaga,” five-year-old Grisha painfully selects sound combinations, trying to say the word “paper.”
Alalik children do not change words by numbers, cases, there are no connectives in their speech, etc., so at 7-8 years old a child speaks like a two or three year old: “Katya is walking in kindergarten,” “the book is bang, the table is on the floor.”
Children with alalia usually do poorly in school. It is difficult for them to pronounce sounds in a sequence, so they read poorly, and poor reading technique interferes with the understanding of what they are reading.
Alalik children have insufficient development of motor skills - they are inactive, awkward, and slow. Many of them have great difficulty learning to dress, comb their hair, etc. Subtle movements of the fingers are undeveloped and uncoordinated.
Since there is underdevelopment of the speech areas of the brain, when working with alalik children, it is necessary to use other areas of the brain, more complete ones - auditory, visual or tactile, and in classes rely mainly on them. Usually these children have more or less pronounced neurotic layers. This also requires treatment. It is necessary to pay attention to the development of general motor skills; Speech therapists here note a particularly beneficial effect of rhythm classes. From our point of view, the training of fine movements of the fingers should also have a very big impact (surely you have heard about the close connection between the functions of the fingers and speech?).
In milder cases of alalia, parents, with the help of a speech therapist, can themselves cope with the child’s speech disorder. In more severe cases, the child must be placed in special medical institutions. Over the course of 3-4 months of treatment and education of the child in a hospital, children 5-6 years old with the absence of many sounds, with individual babbling words, begin to speak in phrases (of course, simple ones, such as “the children are going to school”, “Valya, to the book”), The vocabulary increases by several dozen words, the children memorize poems.
With aphasia, as with alalia, the disorders are usually mixed, however, as a rule, the loss of the ability to understand someone else's speech or the ability to articulate words predominates.
Here's an example. A 13-year-old boy, a 6th grade student, began to grow a tumor in the left temporal region. He began to forget the names of objects and people, then he stopped understanding even simple phrases. Along with such a gross impairment of speech understanding, the boy easily imitated audible words and could even read mechanically, without completely understanding what he was reading. This is a case of predominantly impaired understanding.
Another example. A girl, also 13 years old, who developed a tumor in the temporal and inferior parietal regions. She had significantly less difficulty understanding the speech of others, but her own speech suffered greatly. For example, she said: “The girl is... growing... growing her hair.”
Both of these cases ended successfully, and after the operation the children recovered.
Aphasia, even very severe, goes away relatively quickly in children if the main cause of the speech disorder is eliminated - a brain tumor is removed, hemorrhage after injury has resolved, etc.
Speech restoration occurs in children not only faster, but also more completely than in adults. However, one cannot rely only on the high regenerative abilities of the child’s brain. You need to treat the baby and you need to work with him. In the acute period, it is better to place the child in a hospital, where he will receive constant medical supervision; when the condition improves, he can be treated on an outpatient basis, while simultaneously conducting speech therapy sessions with him.
In conclusion, I would like to make a small summary.
The mental health of a child, including the development of full speech, largely depends on the attention and care of the family. Speech therapists claim that 80% of stuttering cases are of neurotic origin, which means that measures must be taken to treat any neurotic manifestations and reduce the excitability of children. Isn’t establishing a routine, creating a calm environment, and generally strengthening the nervous system in our hands?! Think what a huge percentage of speech neuroses can be prevented if adults feel sufficiently responsible for this!
One more question. When we talked about the treatment of various forms of speech disorders, we always emphasized the need for long-term and systematic work with the child. This is the main condition that will help you cope with trouble if it happens. Of course, parents and everyone who works with a child require a lot of patience and self-discipline. Adults must pay the most serious attention to the state of their own nervous system - a neurotic child always comes from a neurotic family. And if a child is being treated, and at home he finds himself in a tense environment, where they speak in a raised voice, there are frequent conflicts, people are impatient, harsh, then the result of the treatment will be bad. Adults, not only in their own interests, but also in the interests of the child, must fight their neuroses, pull themselves together and restrain themselves from displaying negative emotions and poor health.
Dyslalia, dysarthria, disturbances in the tempo and rhythm of speech, alalia, aphasia - all these disorders can be completely overcome or a significant improvement in the child’s speech can be achieved, but you must help the child persistently, with love and faith in success!
The speech of patients (despite clear articulation and a controllable pace) may be incomprehensible for various reasons:
Personal symbolism
The patient no longer uses words in the generally accepted sense, but gives them a personal meaning that only he understands: personal symbolism, private metaphors, paralogical thinking and speech.
The patient may invent his own expressions:
white - note, serving napkin, handkerchief, car, forget, excuse
green - most leaves, forget, excuse
crows - animals eavesdrop on me
drop - forget
Parasyntax, paragrammatisms, incoherence
Speech loses grammatical and logical affectively felt coherence: speech is torn, dissociated, incoherent, spasmodic, up to complete incoherence. In extreme cases, speech is a verbal and syllabic okroshka (see fragmented thinking).
Such severe grammatical and logical destruction occurs in dementia and exogenous reactions. In rare cases, they occur in excited manic patients.
Some schizophrenics may mostly or occasionally speak completely in disarray (word salad, ). If you know the patient well, you can discover the meaning in this mixture.
The interpretation of the meaning of schizophrenic incoherence and thinking in the sense that the patient wants to evade human understanding in this way is not suitable for such cases. This interpretation makes sense if the patient speaks fragmentarily in cases where we are talking about the “strong points” of his delirium or about certain previous experiences. Others, especially acutely ill patients, produce speech confusion under the influence of overwhelming ideas of death, decay, catastrophe, chaos, fear and panic, and helplessness.
Broken speech also occurs in other psychoses (for example, in epileptics). Such patients express to us with amazing intensity their life realities in their broken, mostly incomprehensible speech. In order to understand the patient, it is necessary to clearly perceive broken speech.
Paraphasia
The patient does not dwell on the question at all, although he understands it, but says in response something completely different. Such paraphasias can appear if the patient cannot or does not want to agree with the interlocutor; this can happen as a defense or if the patient is busy with things that are too far from the subject of the conversation.
Neologisms
New verbal formations, often created by connecting heterogeneous objects /contamination/. Almost exclusively among schizophrenics, who thus form their private symbolism or strive to at least approximately express their perceptions. With a good knowledge of the patients, in many cases they are approximately understandable.
Cryptolalia and cryptography
Some schizophrenics invent their own language, which can be completely incomprehensible and even a personal font, and both are a continuation of personal symbolism.
The development of coherent speech is of particular importance. Development of vocabulary, mastery of grammatical forms, etc. are included in it as special aspects.
Psychologically, in a certain sense, first of all for the speaker himself, any genuine speech that conveys the thought, the desire of the speaker, is coherent speech (as opposed to a separate dependent word extracted from the context of speech), but the forms of coherence have changed in the course of development. We call speech coherent in the specific, terminological sense of the word, which reflects in speech terms all the essential connections of its subject content. Speech can be incoherent for two reasons: either because these connections are not realized and not represented in the speaker's thoughts, or because, although presented in the speaker's thoughts, these connections are not properly identified in his speech. The coherence of speech itself means the adequacy of the speech formulation of the speaker’s or writer’s thoughts from the point of view of its intelligibility for the listener or reader. Coherent speech is speech that can be fully understood on the basis of its own subject content. In order to understand it, there is no need to specifically take into account the particular situation in which it is pronounced; everything in it is clear to another from the very context of speech; This is contextual speech.
The speech of a small child is initially distinguished to a more or less significant extent by the opposite property: it does not form such a coherent semantic whole - such a context that on the basis of this alone it can be fully understood; To understand it, it is necessary to take into account the specific, more or less visual situation in which the child is and to which his speech relates. The semantic content of his speech becomes understandable only when taken together with this situation: this is situational speech.
Thus, distinguishing situational and contextual speech according to its dominant feature, one cannot, however, in any way outwardly oppose them. Every speech has at least some context, and every speech is connected and conditioned by some situation - if not particular, then more general, the situation of the historical development of a given science, etc. Situational and contextual moments are always in internal interconnection and interpenetration; we can only talk about which of them is dominant in each given case.
The main line of development of a child’s speech in this most essential aspect for speech is that from the exclusive dominance of only situational speech, the child moves on to mastery of contextual speech. When a child develops contextual coherent speech, it does not externally layer over situational speech and does not displace it; they coexist, and a child, like an adult, uses one or the other, depending on the content that needs to be communicated and the nature of the communication itself. Situational speech is speech that is naturally used by an adult in a conversation with an interlocutor who is in a common situation with the speaker, when we are talking about its immediate content; one switches to contextual speech, understandable regardless of the situation, when a coherent presentation of a subject that goes beyond the limits of the current situation is required, moreover, a presentation intended for a wide range of listeners (or readers). Since the child first operates only on content that is immediately close to him and uses speech to communicate with loved ones included in a common situation with him, his speech, naturally, is situational in nature. The same character of speech corresponds to both its content and its function. The speech of an adult is basically the same under these conditions. As both the content and functions of speech change during development, the child, through learning, masters the form of coherent contextual speech.
The research conducted by A.M. Leushina under our leadership was devoted to the study of the development of coherent speech in a preschooler, the characteristics of the situational speech of a preschooler, especially the youngest.<...>Situationalism, as it is represented in the child’s speech, manifests itself in diverse forms. Thus, in his speech, a child either completely omits the intended subject, or for the most part replaces it with pronouns. His speech is replete with the words “he”, “she”, “they”, and in the context itself it is not indicated anywhere to whom these pronouns refer; the same pronoun “he” or “she” often in the same sentence refers to different subjects. In the same way, speech is replete with adverbs (“there”, without indicating where exactly, etc.).
Let's give an example. Galya V. (3 years 4 months) says this: “There was a flag on the street far away. There was water there. It was wet there. We walked there with my mother. It was wet there. They wanted to go home, but the rain was dripping. Because he wants eat, guests... I’ll tell you more. He wanted to write it down, but he couldn’t find it.” Transcript of the survey: “We” is Galya, her mother and little brother in her mother’s arms. They all went to watch the demonstration, but it started to drizzle and it became damp. Mom returned home with the children, telling Gala that guests were waiting at home and Volodya wanted to eat.
The word “such” often appears as a characteristic of an object, and the implied content of this epithet is explained by a visual demonstration: with little hands, with great expression, it is demonstrated whether it is so big or so small. What he is is not said, at best it is shown. To understand a child’s thought, speech context alone is not enough; it can be restored only by taking into account the specific situation in which the child was.
A characteristic feature of such situational speech is that it expresses more than it expresses. Facial expressions and pantomimes accompanying speech, gestures, intonations, reinforcing repetitions, inversions and other means of expressiveness, which the child uses, of course, completely involuntarily, but relatively very widely, often significantly outweigh what is contained in the meaning of his words. Emotionally expressive moments are preserved, of course, in more mature speech of the subsequent period, and the degree of this emotionality depends on individual typological characteristics and temperament. But in the future, emotionally expressive moments are included as additional moments in an internally coherent semantic context, and at first they seem to interrupt this context, not complementing, but replacing its substantive semantic content.
Only step by step does the child move on to constructing a speech context that is more independent of the situation. A significant transitional stage on this path is indicatively revealed in one particular but symptomatic phenomenon. Mostly among older preschoolers, a curious speech structure regularly appears: the child first introduces a pronoun (“she”, “it”, etc.), and then, as if feeling the ambiguity of his presentation and the need to clarify it for the listener, he introduces after the pronoun an explanatory noun that deciphers it; “she - a girl - went”, “she - a cow - gored”; “he - a wolf - attacked”, “he - a ball - rolled”, etc.
This form of presentation is not an accidental phenomenon, but a typical one, revealing an essential stage in the child’s speech development. Involuntarily, the child tends to build his speech based on what seems immediately known and understandable to him. But the action of this involuntary tendency is, as it were, interrupted by the emerging consciousness of the need to take into account the listener and construct one’s presentation so that the content of the speech is understandable to another. This latter attitude has not yet taken hold. Therefore, it does not determine the speech structure from the very beginning, but only enters into it additionally, interrupting the situational way of presentation that precedes it.
The transition to a new stage of speech development that begins in this phenomenon is reflected in a number of phenomena that usually accompany it. First of all (according to the observations of A.M. Leushina), children at this stage of development, when questioned by the teacher, willingly and in detail explain what was not revealed in the initial content of their speech, while the teacher’s attempt to establish through questioning what the child is talking about, that what he means by this or that pronoun only irritates and confuses kids. They are obviously not yet able to understand what they want from them, and questions that are incomprehensible to them only irritate them, while they encourage the more developed ones to construct their speech more carefully and more clearly. At the same stage of development, children make their first attempts to introduce the listener into their story, as if first identifying the topic, indicating what the speech will be about.
The peculiar construction of situational speech, the content of which does not form a coherent context in itself, regardless of a particular particular situation, is determined not by some features inherent in age as such, but primarily by the function that speech performs for the child. His speech is colloquial; it serves him to communicate with the people who surround him, are close to him, live by his interests, understand him perfectly. For communication in such conditions, situational speech as such is not defective, inferior speech. In such conditions of direct contact with the interlocutor, an adult also uses situational speech. In a conversation with close people who know a lot, it would be unnecessary and comical pedantry to speak in detailed - contextual - speech, formulating in the content of the speech everything that is already known. The form of speech, naturally, is determined by its main content and purpose. The structure of situational speech is largely determined by the immediate content of the speech and the same direct contact between the speaker and the interlocutor.
An adult moves on to detailed and coherent contextual speech, in which the meaning can be fully understood from the content of what is said, in which all the prerequisites for this understanding are contained in the context of the speech itself, only when his speech begins to serve other purposes, namely, the systematic presentation of what some subject intended for a wider range of listeners. When presenting material that is not directly related to what is directly experienced, it is necessary to construct the speech in a new way; it is necessary to construct it in such a way that in the context of the speech itself the prerequisites for understanding what is being said are revealed. The child masters such contextual speech as, as training progresses, his speech begins to serve new purposes - the presentation of some subject that goes beyond the boundaries of what he has experienced and is not directly related to the situation of the conversation. Leushina’s study simultaneously examined children’s stories about their experiences and the teacher’s retelling of stories. The retelling of preschool children initially also bears quite striking features of colloquial situational speech. This is because the context of a story is very often interrupted by the inclusion of an experience; the text of the story and the content of the experienced situation seem to interpenetrate each other. But still, compared to a story about an experience in a retelling, at all, even at the earliest stages of development, there are significantly fewer elements that are not defined in the context of the speech itself. The process of further development of coherent speech, understandable on the basis of its context, occurs as the child learns more and more freely to present objectively coherent material.
The mechanism of speech formation in a child starts from the very first day of life. In order for this process to proceed quickly and smoothly, we, adults, need to become its most active participants. This long-term investment of our strength and emotions will pay off in spades in three to four years, when we get an interesting interlocutor with his own unconventional thinking and judgments. Speech development in children is the daily work of the baby and parents. Let's look at the stages of speech development in a child.
Where to start? Parents are a speech model for the child. That's why it's so important to be careful not only about what you say, but also how you say it. From the very first days, stimulate the baby’s speech: talk to the child as much as possible - pronounce the words clearly, slowly, but emotionally. Voice everything you do, but try not to limit yourself to everyday speech. Read nursery rhymes, poems - everything that is rhythmic and good for the ear. Look together, or rather, study the pictures in the book your child loves, ask questions. At first he will only show what you ask, and then try to repeat after you. Play toys and theater with your child. Give him an example of how to structure dialogues and situations, and gradually the child will answer you, and then he will come up with the conditions of the game himself.
Speech is life itself, so don’t limit your learning to printed materials and interactive toys. The surrounding world and nature will inspire your baby to new verbal discoveries, develop imagination and awaken the imagination. While walking, try to pay attention to such details as a curled dry leaf that looks like a tube, which can become a spyglass, or a drop of dew, which could very well become a real sea for ants. In the summer, build sand castles with winding passages, fly paper airplanes together, and lay out drawings from natural materials in the sand. In the fall, collect bouquets of leaves (at the same time learn the names of trees, shades of flowers), acorns, maple seeds, which will then be used for crafts. In winter, make snowmen and paint them with paints, bring home an icicle and let it melt in a basin. In the spring, launch boats in streams, show your child some drops, listen to the chirping of sparrows. All these actions fit into the child’s routine moments and do not require special costs. But if you miss time and leave the baby to his own devices, then closer to school you will have to make up for lost time by leaps and bounds, and what was so naturally laid down in childhood will have to be crammed in in large portions. And from such information overeating, you know what happens: nervousness, reluctance to learn.
Unfortunately, not every parent has the time and opportunity to work systematically with their child. Specialist teachers can come to the rescue, including children's speech therapists in children's development centers. Most often, their programs are aimed at ensuring that the child develops harmoniously, receiving and assimilating information in accordance with age and individual characteristics.
How to continue your child's education
What happens next? And then we teach the child to use what he has accumulated, that is, to express his thoughts correctly and coherently - to explain, prove, build a narrative logic and compose. This is a more complex process that goes beyond everyday speech and is related to verbal creativity. Future works take their origins here.
Let's start this stage with the basics - the ability to compose a short story about any living or inanimate object or item. In the future, this kind of information will be useful for your first-grader to prepare reports: after all, very often it is the inability to correctly manage a large amount of information that leads to the fact that the child finds it difficult to start a story, to compose a story from a picture. This process is comparable to the question from adult life: “How are you?”, when you can talk at length and in various ways on the proposed topic, but most limit themselves to the answer: “Fine.” Let's use diagrams - these universal maps, which are clear step-by-step instructions and do not allow you to stray from the right path of word creation, at the same time, eliminating repetitions and hesitations in speech.
What is a story outline?
Who → Which group does it belong to → Description → Where does it live → What does it eat → What benefits does it bring → Features
For example, here is a story about a dog that can be compiled according to this scheme:
"A dog is a domestic animal. The appearance of the dog depends on the breed. Dachshunds are small, with a long body, an elongated muzzle and a long tail. Their legs are short. These dogs are designed for hunting foxes in narrow holes. Boxers have a flattened muzzle, wide chest, strong paws - this is a fighting breed. In villages, dogs live on the street in kennels. In cities, dogs are kept in apartments. They feed on meat, special food. For a long time, the dog has been a friend and an indispensable assistant to man. hunt wolves, foxes, birds, saved people both on the water and in the mountains. There are special guide dogs for the blind.”
A similar scheme applies to inanimate objects.
What → Which group does it belong to → Parts → What is it made of → What is it used for
After the child has learned to compose descriptive stories, you can move on to the next stage - learning to compose stories based on a series of pictures. What is important here is the ability to build a logical chain: arrange the pictures in the correct order, because all our actions in ordinary life are carried out according to certain patterns.
It is important to convey to the child that pictures and the events taking place in them are not abstract stories, but what surrounds the child in everyday life. Let the child identify himself with the main character. He will tell you what he would feel, say and do in the character’s place. Let him give his name and the names of his friends to the children drawn.
Let the child tell you the rules of playing hide and seek, tag, what you need to do to brush your teeth, boil water in a kettle, or go down to the first floor.
It is very important to expand your child’s horizons, talk about everything that surrounds him - this will greatly help enrich your baby’s vocabulary and quickly develop full-fledged literate speech. Try to visit different places with your child, try as many different things as possible, play a variety of games. For example, if a child has never been fishing, he will not be able to write a story about the fun adventures of fishing boys on a river, since there are different laws and terminology here.
Then we teach the child to write stories based on the pictures. Let's use our imagination and turn one picture into a series of three, mentally imagining the beginning and then the ending of our story.
And the last stage - the most difficult - is the ability to compose a story-description of nature from a picture. At first glance, there is no action, no heroes, just one forest. But, closing your eyes and stepping out of reality into the very thicket of an imaginary forest, you discover that life here is in full swing. In order not to get lost in this thicket, again, a diagram-description of the signs of the seasons will come to our aid.
Day and Night → Weather → Flora → The world of birds, animals, insects.
Here is an example of a story about autumn, compiled according to this scheme:
“In autumn, the days become shorter and the nights longer. At the beginning of autumn there are fine days. This time is called “Indian summer”. But then the sky frowns, becomes cloudy and a tedious rain drizzles all day long. A piercing cold wind blows. The trees dress up in painted clothes - yellow, red, orange, purple. The wind will blow and a colorful rain of leaves will fall from the trees. Autumn is the time of leaf fall. Birds gather in flocks and fly to warmer regions. Animals are preparing to hibernate, fattening up, storing food for the winter. Squirrels and hares change their summer coats for winter ones."
And finally - communication with the child
During preschool, a child's natural environment is play, so turn learning into play. Exercise, that is, communicate while walking, on the way to the garden, to the store. Don’t sit at the table at home, like at school: just let your child look through the book, and complete the task that interests him, together. If your child is motivated to study, then, on the contrary, you can play school with him. In any case, be guided by the individual characteristics of your child, find an approach to him, and he will respond to you with interest, receptivity and understanding.
Listen carefully to your child, do not interrupt or rush him, do not scold him or compare him with others. Practice when your child is in a good mood, has had enough sleep and is not hungry.
Russian, like any other language, requires regularity, so it is better to study every day for 15-20 minutes than once a week for an hour. When our children begin to learn a foreign language, we understand that only regular classes can guarantee results and effectiveness; learning the Russian language and developing speech is also no exception and requires a systematic approach.
From an early age, it is necessary to teach a child to speak not only in the language of everyday life, but to use all the richness of the Russian language in his speech. Communication is one of the basic human needs, and your baby needs it like no other. Everyone has the opportunity to create, and we can do this every minute, creating small verbal masterpieces. Language is not only one of the most important means of communication, but also a living material that has its own color, shape and taste. We have to reveal this to children, teaching them to create within the framework of certain laws. This is a long path, and it depends on us, adults, whether they will take a narrow wandering path or a wide road on the path to new knowledge, discoveries and free communication.
- T.Yu. Bardysheva, T.A. Chokhonelidze "Retellings and Stories".
- T.A. Tkachenko "Big book of tasks and exercises for the development of coherent speech of a child."
Leave the room for 5 minutes... and... let him restore to you the course of events while you were away... and compare with what is on the disk... that's the work on the mistakes...
GOOD LUCK TO YOU.
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I don’t know how to explain this, but my eldest child couldn’t tell stories from pictures at all, didn’t understand the order... no matter how much I struggled, there was no result...
But he was a very developed child, he spoke fluently from the age of one and a half, had a large vocabulary, easily and quickly learned to read and count, and generally thought well, now everything is in perfect order too...
In short, my conclusion is that this skill doesn’t mean anything... It’s just that some people see these pictures and know how to put them together in stories, others don’t. I also admit that this is useful :) But inability is not fatal :)
The article is really good.
But - I’ll say right away - I’m a ped, not a _logo_ped. But I had to deal with my children’s speech problems closely, specifically and uh, massively.
Because the eldest is already an adult - and he had a bunch of speech diagnoses - and, in fact, everything was straightened out and he generally showed quite good results in his studies and development, I dare to criticize: the idea of accustoming a small child to schemes is extremely vicious.
Yes, there is a chance to get an excellent student in junior school. Maybe this honor will last until middle school and even high school. And what?
In one of the best Moscow schools (actually, what is there to hide? - in 2007 *-)) there is a technique aimed at correcting the “schematic”, “schoolboy” system of thinking - that is, getting rid of the consequences of training, which we are told about in this article. Unfortunately, this school does not have primary classes and they begin to teach a child to think outside of diagrams only at the age of 11... I’ll be honest - the methodology does not help everyone *-(
Great article and to the point, which is nice