Today we will try to figure out one abbreviation that brings fear to many parents. ZPR - what is it? Is this condition amenable to correction?
ZPR stands for mental retardation. I wonder how the doctor defines this? By the way, it is not so rare that these three letters appear in the map of the observed child.
What exactly includes the diagnosis of ZPR
Recently, the problem of ZPR has attracted keen interest. Indeed, in fact, such a diagnosis is too ambiguous. Behind it is a mass of all kinds of premises and causes that caused this deviation. As a rule, we are not talking about severe underdevelopment of speech, motor functions or vision and hearing. The problem lies precisely in the difficulties for a particular child in learning and adapting in one environment or another, caused by a slowdown in the psyche. For each child, it manifests itself in different ways, varying in time and degree of manifestation.
How to determine ZPR: what is it for an individual child
The developmental delay manifests itself most clearly in the immaturity of the emotional-volitional sphere. It’s hard for a child to force himself to do anything. And this inevitably leads to impaired attention: it turns out to be unstable, the child is easily distracted, cannot concentrate on one lesson. To this, as a rule, one more symptom-specific symptom is added: speech and motor activity.
In medicine, this is referred to as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: the child is spinning, unable to stand still, unable to wait in line for the game, responds without having finished listening to the question, he cannot speak or play quietly.
Disorders of thinking and speech in ZPR
What it is is now clear. ZPR is often expressed in the pace of speech development. As a rule, a child with this problem in communication pays more attention to gestures and intonation, having a limited vocabulary. Violations in this case are reversible, succumbing to correction. Every year, the child more and more catches up with their peers, overcoming speech deficiency.
There is a lag in such children in all forms of thinking (analysis, generalization, synthesis, comparison). They cannot distinguish, for example, the main features in the generalization. Answering the question: “How can you call a word a dress, pants, socks, a sweater?” - such a child will say: “This is all that is needed for a person” or “This all lies in our closet.” At the same time, children with disabilities can supplement the proposed group of subjects without difficulty. When comparing objects, this process is carried out according to random signs. "How are people different from animals?" “People walk in coats, but animals don't.”
Problems of communicative adaptation of children with ZPR, what is it
A distinctive feature of children with ZPR is the problematic interpersonal relationship for them with both peers and adults. The need for communication in such children is reduced. In relation to the adults on whom they depend, many are found to have increased anxiety. New people attract such children much less than new items. If problems arise, the child is more likely to stop his activity than to turn to someone for help.
Children with disabilities, as a rule, are not ready for “warm” relations with their peers, reducing them to purely “business” ones. Moreover, in games only one side’s interest is taken into account, and the rules are always strict in nature, excluding any variations.