Immediately I want to say that speech disorders of children are one of the most common and common problems. A huge number of parents, when their baby is under the age of five, undergo a sound pronunciation examination with him and struggle with such a problem. But the difficulty also lies in the fact that parents often fall into one of the extremes.
Worry, panic ahead of time
For example, when a child is 1.5-2.5 years old, and he does not pronounce certain sounds, you should consult a doctor. Especially if this refers to the difficult harmonies of Sh, L, R. And with such a problem, parents immediately run to the examination of sound pronunciation. But these sounds are complex, and a young child is simply not yet able to pronounce them correctly due to his age. That is why he can either skip them or replace them with simpler letters that he can speak correctly.
It is also up to a certain age is also a physiological feature, let's say, a conditional norm. This topic is disclosed in more detail in Konovalenko’s book “Express examination of sound pronunciation”.
Second option
The other extreme, when parents pull for too long, do not undergo examination of sound pronunciation, do not pay attention to the problem, considering it to be an age-related feature. They believe that everything will pass by itself, the sounds themselves will rise. That is why mothers do not take any action.
Of course, ideally, you do not need to go to extremes, you need to find a middle ground and adhere to it. How to do this?
Know age norms
Knowledge will help not to panic ahead of time. That is, there are age periods when for a child certain sounds are simply physiologically quite difficult. He is not able to pronounce them. When parents know this, they stop panicking, because they understand that this is just an age factor.
And vice versa, if adults understand that already by the standards the sound should have appeared, but the child does not have it or he replaces it with another in speech. Then the parents understand that there is no need to take time, but rather to do something, consult, pass an examination of sound pronunciation and begin to help the child in a playful way so that the sound finally appears and stands up correctly.
Therefore, knowing the age norms is very, very important.
The second point is to develop speech and non-speech hearing
Why is this necessary? In order for the child to correctly pronounce certain sounds, he must first hear him correctly. That is, he should have normal physiological hearing, he should correctly perceive both non-speech and speech sounds. And there is also a nuance. If a child's physiological hearing is naturally good, sharp, then this does not guarantee that everything will be in order. This happens because nature is so inherent. The pronunciation of sounds is initially imperfect and you need to help the child develop them and set them correctly. And it is in the power of each parent.
Non-speech sounds are all the sounds of the world, except for speech itself. For example, it is the roar of the wind, the crackle of snow, raindrops and so on.
Speech hearing is already the ability to distinguish where one word ended and another began, to determine the tempo, intonation, that is, all the subtleties of speech. To further understand the topic, you can read the works of Konovalenko "Survey of sound pronunciation."
Articulation gymnastics
Up to four years, it is recommended to do such a training at least several times a day, that is, it is not necessary, but desirable. You can use at least the simplest exercises, it is not necessary to immediately take on the whole complex of articulation gymnastics.
It can be started from the age of one year, and sometimes earlier. For example, you can use the following exercises: invite the child to grimace, show the tongue and hide it, puff out his cheeks and draw them in, make the lips a bow and much more. All these tasks are quite accessible to the child and help strengthen his speech muscles: lips, cheeks and tongue. This complex helps the baby with the pronunciation of certain sounds. In more adulthood, if you do such gymnastics, it will be easier for him to correctly position these organs.
And with these three points, including knowledge of norms, skills development and gymnastics, parents help the child when he still does not say anything physiologically. Adults create favorable conditions for the correct production of sounds.
Speech Therapy
When a child already has some kind of lag, even if it is the retreat of individual sounds or, in general, a violation of sound pronunciation, parents should further help the child overcome difficulties as quickly as possible.
Before moving on to materials for examining sound pronunciation, it is worth answering the question why it is necessary to consult a speech therapist when there is any delay:
1. Mom is not always really able to objectively assess the state of sound pronunciation. And there are several reasons for this:
- Get used to the way the child says. That is, she no longer hears if there are any defects. When a mother is often with her child, hearing acuity is slightly dulled, and she does not always understand whether the child is making this or that sound correctly or not.
- Can understand a child even without words. What can I say, when a child makes sounds a little incorrectly.
- Sometimes it’s impossible even to admit to myself that there is a problem and some actions need to be taken. Sometimes you want, like an ostrich, to hide his head in the sand and wait for everything to be decided. And also very often the mother wants to convince herself that she thought she heard or was this age.
2. And another important point is that when pronouncing, staging, and fixing the sound, it is very important to know some nuances and observe a certain sequence. This is necessary so as not to harm the child even more. Since if it is incorrect to show the position of the articulation organs, for example, the tongue, and the child fixes this, then it is much more difficult to correct this situation.
Attention check
Before parents begin directly to those games, topics and exercises that are necessary for the correct production of sound, it is necessary to evaluate the hearing. Therefore, it all starts with a quality check of the child’s attention.
There are several ways to do this. Ideally, hold them all. Not one time, of course, not one day, but still try to do the exercises. The most important thing is to tune both parents and the child. It is important that the baby wants to play, so that he has a good mood. Once again, it is worth noting that it is not necessary to do everything at one time and one day.
The most important thing is that it is a pleasure for the child and at the same time does not oppress the parents themselves.
Sounding toys should be placed around the child.
The essence of the exercise is that it is necessary to close the child’s eyes or ask him to turn away, in general, to do as he feels comfortable. And after that it is necessary to take material for examination of sound pronunciation, in this case it is a toy, and begin to sound with it. Then the baby turns, examines all his treasures and shows the instrument on which the adult played.
Naturally, you should not take completely new toys for the game. The child should already know how the objects used sound. If this point is not fulfilled, then first you need to play with the baby so that he recognizes and remembers how this or that toy sounds. In this case, you need to pay attention to every child.
Toy location
Besides the fact that the child must determine what subject sounded, it is very important that he also knows where the sound comes from. And here you can invite the baby to turn away, ringing him with a bell from below, from above, to the right, to the left, that is, in different positions. And he must point the finger or say where he hears the sound.
An important point in the methodology for examining sound pronunciation is closing the eyes of the child. Before you do this, you must definitely ask for his permission. There are different options for reproducing this action, firstly, one of the adults can close their eyes with their own hands, and secondly, you can tie it with a small scarf. But in any case, the child should not be afraid and protest, but for this you first need to ask about his desires.
An important idea of this point is that the methodology for examining sound pronunciation involves checking auditory comprehension. If the child is not yet confident enough in performing these tasks, does not understand what is required of him, is mistaken, then it is important for adults to check and forget more than once, and conduct regular training.
What to look for
When evaluating auditory attention, parents should keep a record of sound pronunciation testing. This can be done in any notebook or notebook. This action is necessary not only to try to remember and forget over time, but to have accurate information about all the errors in the perception of what you hear.
Perhaps the child does not correctly show which instrument sounded or did not recognize the direction of the bell. All this must be recorded in the examination protocol for sound pronunciation. Firstly, it will be easier for adults themselves, they will understand what to look for. And secondly, if it is necessary to contact specialists, the notebook will be an excellent assistant for correcting the situation.
Sound pronunciation rating
All work begins with a careful examination of isolated articulation. In the examination of sound pronunciation in preschoolers, it is important to understand how the baby reproduces individual letters. And here it is advisable to present everything in the form of a game. For example, to check the letter C, you can ask your child to show how water flows or to make a sound of a pump that pumps a ball. That is, if you require the baby to say something, then there is a big chance that he will refuse and will not say anything. And if you build an examination of the state of sound pronunciation as a game, then the child will be happy to participate.
Absolutely any articulation can be visualized, for example, to depict together with the kids that there is a pump in the hands and they need to pump up a deflated ball or tire. S-S-S-S-S-S. Etc.
For each sound, you can come up with your own associations: Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh - a snake, Shch-Shch-Shch-Shch - hissing a frying pan when mother fries cutlets. During cooking, you can invite your child to turn into a roasting pan and hiss. ZZZZZ - a mosquito or a bumblebee flies. And so, for each sound, an adult comes up with an association and plays with the child, while checking.
Sound Exercise Exercises
When an adult checks the first paragraph and hears a child pronouncing isolated letters, you can move on to syllables, words and phrases. And here it’s also worth using some pictures or just asking to repeat after mom. But of course, with visual material everything will be more effective.
You need to conduct a survey of the pronunciation of preschool children in order to understand how the child reproduces complex combinations at the beginning, middle and end of the word, as well as at the junction of consonants and vowels. It is also worth paying attention not only to whether it turns out for the baby to pronounce all the letters or not, but also to see how he does it.
After adults have checked the pronunciation in words, you can move on to phrases and various sentences. Color pictures are also great here as a visual aid. But you can beat everything differently. For example, put the doll in bed and ask, what does she do? Sonya is sleeping. If the child already agrees to simply repeat, then you can not complicate the check.
Tip: when parents are engaged with the baby, you need to pronounce the sound more stretched, that is, not a snowman, but s-s-snowman.
How to evaluate the result
Again, it is very important to record each step in a speech therapy album for examination of sound pronunciation. And even more so, when parents check their speech or simply play with the child and understand that the syllable and word is poorly reproduced, this needs to be fixed. If a defect was discovered, that is, the baby does not succeed or does not work, then you must definitely make an entry in the album to examine sound pronunciation.
It happens that the child has no sound at all, for example, “uk” instead of “bow” or “eka” instead of “river”, or the letter is replaced by a simpler one, for example, instead of “ball” he says “sarik”. And if we are talking about the fact that the age of the child is up to 4-5 years, then in fact such a defect can be a simple age-related tongue-tongue, that is, a feature due to the fact that the baby is not physiologically able to pronounce the sound correctly. There is a high probability that the problem itself will be solved when the child grows a little and develops his articular muscles. It is worth remembering that each sound should become at a certain age, when the speech apparatus and hearing mature.
But all the same, ideally, parents should simultaneously create favorable conditions. It is necessary to conduct games and various trainings for the development of hearing, articulatory gymnastics and so on. This is necessary so that the sound appears on time, and there are no problems.
Sometimes it can happen that even when the mother spends various games, the child does not get the sound in the right place and you must already consult a specialist. But if adults have prepared a certain base, and the baby already knows many tasks for examining sound pronunciation, a speech therapist will be easier, since speech hearing is developed and the apparatus is strengthened.
The mistake of many is that parents expect a certain age. This is wrong, as soon as the child begins to understand what they are told, learns to repeat after the parents, it is already possible to conduct developmental games 1-2 times a week.
If such deviations are observed in a child after 4–5 years, then the delay indicates that there is some reason that prevents one or another sound from being acquired. And this is already a true violation, and in difficult situations it can even be a neurological problem, when the connection between the organs of articulation and the central nervous system is broken. In such a situation, each training should be carried out only under the guidance of a specialist.
Distorted pronunciation
Throat sounds P - this is when the baby does not vibrate with the tip of the tongue, but with the sky, that is, the result is a more French manner, or when the child sticks its tongue between the teeth when pronouncing hissing and whistling sounds - all this can no longer be called age-old tongue-tied languages.
In this case, at 4-4.5 years, you need to contact a speech therapist, because already such defects are not corrected independently. Here you should not wait for the sound to become on its own. The longer the pull, the stronger this defect is fixed and then it becomes more difficult to correct the situation.
Able to pronounce correctly, but mixes sounds
If the child speaks, then the hat, then the hat, or depending on the position in the word uses the wrong letters, then the reason may be precisely because it is difficult for him to distinguish the text by ear. It means that he does not catch the difference of some combinations, for him, for example, S-Z or R-L, they sound the same. And here, of course, it is very important to develop a phonetic ear, and in fact, this option should by no means be left to chance. As in principle, the previous problems, but this defect is especially because it can later lead to problems with reading and writing. With such a violation, it is necessary to conduct a specialist examination as early as possible in order to begin to correct everything in a playful way. It will also be useful to visit a speech therapist.
Norms of the appearance of sounds
As already mentioned in the article, letters are acquired gradually with age. It should be noted right away that these are conditional norms, in different cases it can be different. And you need to individually look, this is a child’s feature or the wrong pronunciation of sound.
1. A, O, E, P, B, M.
In the first or second year of life, the child begins to pronounce some vowels and the simplest consonants, since they are as close as possible to sucking. The easiest way for a child to pronounce them. That is why, when he begins to babble, at about 5-7 months, such a chain as pa-pa-pa, ma-ma-ma, ba-ba-ba begins. And so the first word is dad or mom, or woman.
2. And, S, Y, F, B, T, D, H, G, K, X, Y.
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