Children with defects in sound pronunciation have significantly increased in recent years. A decade ago, the picture was different. The most common problems are burrs, distortion of sounds, replacing or skipping those that are difficult to pronounce. These types of defects are considered light and are denoted by the term dislocation. They are relatively easy to adjust in the classroom with a speech therapist.
But there are more complex variants of speech disorders. Their reasons lie in the defeat of the central nervous system, in which there are problems with the normal functioning of the tongue or the entire lower jaw. Such defects are corrected very, very hard. At the same time, pronouncing hissing and whistling sounds, the child sticks out his tongue between his teeth, which is why instead of a whistling sound he gets the sound "f" ("muffin" - instead of "car"). The pronunciation of the sound "p" (larynx or its complete absence) is also very common. As a rule, begin speech therapy sessions with a child 3-4 years old, sometimes earlier.
The nature of speech therapies
Complex defects arise for a number of reasons - such as a mother’s infectious disease during pregnancy, birth injury, or fetal hypoxia. If the child born subsequently suffered a serious illness, the result may be a violation of blood circulation with damage to the nerve endings and, as a result, speech defects.
Incorrect occlusion is one of the reasons, and the source of certain disorders (for example, the throat “p”) can even be the imitation of a baby by someone from adults who also distort speech. In addition, the child can copy the heroes of modern cartoons, which are very harmful for development.
Illiteracy directly depends on the pronunciation. That is why the parents of each preschooler should make sure that the speech defects in the baby are corrected in time. The problem may be the parents' inability to detect a speech defect in their children. It is believed that any baby burrs, and it will pass by itself.
When to start worrying
But more often than not you can do without regular classes with a speech therapist. If a one and a half year old baby does not know how to compose phrases from separate words, or there is practically no speech in a two-year-old child, an appeal to a speech therapist will most likely be required. Planning of speech therapy lessons for prudent parents is carried out ahead of time, taking into account the dynamics of children's development.
A speech therapist works with each of the children individually. The production of one separate sound, as a rule, takes place over several sessions. If there are serious deviations in development, it will take much longer to attend speech therapy sessions.
It happens that the cause of violations is too tight frenum of the tongue, while there are no organic lesions. Then at home you should do stretching exercises with the baby. The lessons of a speech therapist will help you with this.
The parent family is the foundation of everything
Often in the family it is not customary to talk a lot with the baby. They can communicate with him in a sucking "childish" language. Or he becomes a witness to family scandals. In all these cases, as a rule, the development of speech is inhibited.
A favorable home environment is extremely important for the normal development of language skills. You should always talk with your baby - during a game or a walk, at a meal and before bedtime. Be sure to memorize poetry and read books to the baby aloud.
If you have recorded even a slight violation of sound pronunciation in your son or daughter, do not fence yourself off from the problem. It is possible to organize speech therapy classes at home, the benefit of specialized literature is now a dime a dozen. For example, you can arrange a game with singing special songs. And only when homework does not give the desired effect, you should think about visiting a specialist.
Do you need a speech therapy kindergarten?
Often, parents tend to give their baby not to an ordinary kindergarten, but to a speech therapist. It is believed that the conditions there are preferable to solve the problems that have arisen. Is it really that important to get there? If so, at what age? Will the speech therapy classes in kindergarten bring real benefit to your child?
As a rule, giving a child under the age of 3-4 to the hands of specialists is not very effective. Parents can successfully deal with the smallest, having previously consulted with a speech therapist. He will tell you a set of measures and the necessary exercises. Speech therapy sessions with a child of 3-4 years old are already able to give a lasting effect.
The arsenal of parenting with children is huge. This is a constant correct and active speech communication with the baby, finger gymnastics, many speech games, hand massage, special exercises designed to develop fine motor skills, drawing, modeling and so on.
When to go there
Most often, speech defects of a baby under the age of 3-4 years old are classified as physiological. If four years of self-correction of speech did not occur, you can contact the specialists. At this point, the child’s initial speech skills should already be in place. And just then it makes sense to send the baby to a speech therapy kindergarten.
The advantage of the latter is the saving of parental time and money in the classroom with a specialist in private. In state kindergartens there are free speech therapy classes. If the benefits of visiting the group for a long time are not found, most likely, you will need the services of a speech therapist-defectologist for the purpose of general development of speech.
When communicating with your baby, try to forever abandon a funny children's language, which often affects mothers and, especially, grandmothers. As mentioned above, communication in such a “warped” manner impedes the development of normal children's speech.
What should be able to baby by 4 years
But even if everyone in the family speaks correctly, but there are problems nonetheless, do not rush to get upset. Organizing speech therapy classes with a 3-4 year old child at home is not so difficult. And the main thing here is a sensitive attitude to the baby’s speech and careful monitoring of any changes.
As a rule, the vocabulary of a two-three-year-old child is about a thousand words. Normally, a four-year-old baby should be able to tell or describe something using prepositions and various parts of speech, to build a simple dialogue. But his speech apparatus may still not be sufficiently trained, which is why a pure pronunciation of complex phonemic structures is not obtained.
Well, if speech disturbances occur at 5-6 years old, this is a serious reason to think. The following simple exercises related to articulation gymnastics will help parents get results at home.
Activities with a child at home
To stretch a short frenum of the tongue for 5 or 10 minutes, the following steps should be performed daily. You need to ask the child to lick his upper lip with his tongue, offer him to knock on their teeth like a horse with hooves, open his mouth wider and try to reach his upper teeth with his tongue.
Everyone knows that the brain regions responsible for fine motor skills and speech development are interconnected. That is, the more deftly the kid wields his hands and fingers, the less problems he has with speech.
There are simple exercises for speech therapy classes that teach the pronunciation of whistling sounds ("c", "h"), as well as hissing ("w", "w", "h" and "u"). In addition, there are frequent problems with the sounds "p" and "l", but this can also be corrected independently at home. While practicing, the child needs to be seated by placing a mirror for self-control in front of him. Home speech therapy sessions “p” will not always be able to “deliver”; this sound is considered one of the most complex and usually requires specialist intervention.
Exercise examples
- Exercise "Pipe". Ask the baby to close his teeth, stretch his lips with a pipe as far as he can. Make sure that when lifting the tongue, the lower lip remains motionless. The exercise should be repeated 3 to 5 times.
- Exercise "Cup". Open your mouth wider, stick out your tongue and try to give it a cup shape, lifting the tip and edges. As long as you count to a certain number, let the child try to keep his tongue in that position. The exercise is also repeated 3 to 5 times.
- Exercise "Painter". Smile, then open your mouth. After that, with the tip of the tongue, like a brush, “paint” the sky from the inside.
- "Drummer". Quickly hit with the tip of the tongue behind the upper row of teeth, keeping your mouth open. Another thing is to remove the tip of the tongue alternately for the upper and lower teeth. An exercise is being done under the count.
- "We eat jam." Smile with his mouth open. Lick the upper lip widely, watching the immobility of the lower jaw.
After completing the exercises, proceed to the repetition of words containing problem sounds. You can prepare cards with them in advance. The sound that is being worked on should be repeated first several times separately (from 7 to 10), then in words. It is very useful to choose tongue twisters with the right words, their pronunciation significantly accelerates the correction of deficiencies.
Where do speech impairments come from?
Speech defects can also occur in an adult - due to a severe operation, an injury, or a serious emotional experience. Such may be the loss or death of a loved one, divorce, serious financial turmoil. Speech deficiencies also arise when the main organs associated with sound pronunciation are injured - the tongue, teeth, lips, ligaments and muscles of the larynx, as well as the palate.
This happens when there is damage to the center located in the cerebral cortex and responsible for our speech. Even chronic emotional stress can cause speech problems.
Normal speech means the pronunciation of all, without exception, letters of the language distinctly and clearly. Such a speech must be rhythmic and smooth. If the speaker’s words are hard to make out, it is undoubtedly a violation. Adults and children with speech impairment have the same types of speech deficiencies. These include dumbness, stuttering, lisp, lack of proper pronunciation of individual sounds and much more.
Types of speech pathologies
The most common ones are:
- Athonia . This term refers to disturbed phonation (that is, incorrect sound pronunciation). Aphonia (or dysphonia) develops as a result of changes in the speech apparatus that are pathological in nature.
- Dyslalia is the phonetic speech impairment of an adult or child with impaired hearing and grammatically correct speech.
- Stuttering is a type of disorder that occurs in the case of convulsive reduction of muscles related to the vocal apparatus. It is detected as a violation of the pace of speech, its rhythm and dimensionality.
- Another violation, manifesting itself at an abnormally slow speech pace, is called bradyllia .
- The opposite of it (when a person speaks too fast) is tachyllia .
- Rinolalia is a type of speech pathology associated with a violation of the anatomical nature of the organs that form the speech apparatus. Manifested in distorted sound pronunciation and voice timbre.
- Dysarthria is a type of disorder when the nerve endings functioning insufficiently connecting the cerebral cortex with the speech apparatus.
- Aphasia refers to complete or partial loss of speech that occurs as a result of damage to the central nervous system.
- If the speech of a child or adult is underdeveloped, which often occurs with lesions of the cerebral cortex, we are talking about alalia .
Specialists will help you
The causes of these anomalies can be various factors. These are congenital defects such as failure of the palate or upper lip, an abnormal bite, malformed jaws, defects in the lips, tongue, or teeth. Acquired violations are in cases of diseases of the ENT organs or central nervous system. Violations can be either permanent or temporary.
The peculiarity of young children is that each of them has a strictly individual phenomenon such as the development of speech. Speech therapy classes are held in every kindergarten - not only in a specialized one.
If your child was sent to speech therapy classes, you should not refuse - they will not bring any harm to the child, and the benefit will be undoubted.
For children 3-4 years old, speech therapy classes exist in two forms - individual or group. One-on-one lessons with a specialist (individual) are most effective. In turn, being engaged in a group, the baby feels more comfortable and relaxed.
Individual speech therapy lesson
What are these classes for the development of speech? Usually they take place in the form of simple games and events. Kids often do not understand that they are doing some kind of purposeful work. With a speech therapist they play, have fun and have fun.
The child usually goes to an individual speech therapy session when the violation is the incorrect pronunciation of any particular sounds. With the help of specially selected games and exercises, the speech therapist corrects the defect. If the baby stutters, the already mentioned exercises for the tongue (as well as others) are combined with learning how to properly distribute breathing.
Singing songs, the child trains to breathe correctly, and stuttering disappears spontaneously. Gradually, children learn to control their own breathing, and the better this skill is mastered, the more likely it will be to get rid of stuttering once and for all.
Front classes
Group speech therapy sessions (otherwise called frontal) are conducted among children with various deviations in speech development. These include not only impaired sound pronunciation and hearing problems. For example, a baby may not distinguish paired sounds. Other problems of the same series are violation of speech grammar, lack of connection between spoken words.
Groups for classes are selected in the amount of 6-8 people of the same age, having similar speech problems. Speech therapy plans contain a common goal - to expand vocabulary and improve phonemic hearing. Children are purposefully trained in oral speech, engaged in the practical development of the skills learned in individual lessons. Most often, most children are engaged both in a group and individually.
Logopedic lesson on the theme of "Autumn"
Consider how you can build a correctional lesson with children using specific topics, for example, seasons. Let us have an “autumn” lesson. It is good to spend it in September or October, decorating the room with yellow leaves.
In the lesson, a speech therapist, using the themes of autumn and natural phenomena, expands and activates vocabulary on the topic, teaches children from pictures to make separate sentences first, and then a connected story from them. Along the way, children reinforce the skills of response with a complete proposal and coordination of speech and movements.
A speech therapy lesson on the topic "Autumn" solves the problem of the correctional development plan - improving fine motor skills with the help of finger gymnastics, developing memory, thinking through exercises and games. Children learn poems by Russian poets about autumn, listen to the music “Sounds of the Autumn Forest”, list signs of autumn weather, and solve riddles on the “autumn” theme.
Kids collect bouquets of leaves, clutching their fingers into fists (fine motor skills), blow on leaves, depicting the autumn wind (breathing exercises).
We continue at home
Those skills that give the speech therapist lessons must be worked out and secured in the family, at home. To do this, specialists conduct explanatory work with parents, give the most detailed recommendations on building homework.
A lot here depends on the responsible approach of parents to solving the problem. If mom or dad is not too lazy to regularly devote several minutes a day to the development of the child’s speech, then success will not take long. The most important task for parents is to help the child gain confidence in the fight against fear of communication and speaking in public.
Expectant mothers and fathers should encourage a child. Even the smallest success must be appreciated. As a result, the baby’s self-esteem is growing, there is an incentive for further achievements.
Be considerate
At the same time, one should not be too zealous and fundamentally force the child to constantly use only correctly constructed words and phrases. This will lead to unnecessary stress, can discourage the baby from the desire to engage. Let him remain a child. We remind you again - speech therapy sessions with a 3-4 year old child should be built solely in the form of a game!
With a baby, exercises should be performed unobtrusively, without focusing on existing problems. If as a result the baby is in a frustrated or depressed state, such training will not bring success. You will achieve nothing but isolation and aggressive reaction.
Between classes, let him continue to speak with errors that may disappear spontaneously. At one point, parents will be surprised and delighted to discover that the baby is trying to control the correctness of speech.
For the development of fine motor skills, it is useful to massage the child with each finger, bend and unbend them, play board games. More often, let the baby sort through the groats or mess in the sand. At home, any bulk material is suitable instead. Do not forget about articulation gymnastics. Pay as much attention as possible to reading, learn simple songs and rhymes with your baby.