Speech therapy: diseases — симптомы, диагностика и лечение

Delayed speech development is a condition in which a child’s speech is formed noticeably later and slower than that of his peers, with intact hearing and without gross intellectual impairment. The most common mistake parents make here is not panic, but the opposite - waiting. The advice “wait until three years old, boys always talk later” sounds soothing and is passed down from generation to generation, but it is the one that most often deprives a child of the most productive time for help. The speech areas of the brain are most plastic in the first three years of life, and classes started at two years old have an incomparably greater effect than the same classes at five years old. At the same time, it is important to understand: not every delay means a serious problem - some children actually catch up with their peers. The task of adults is not to guess, but to check.

Stuttering is a violation of the fluency of speech, in which a child repeats sounds and syllables, stretches them out, or gets stuck on a word, unable to start it. Most often, it appears between the ages of two and five years, during a period of rapid speech development, when the child’s thoughts run faster than articulation can cope. The good news is that for most children, such hesitations go away on their own within a few months or a year or two. The bad news is that it is impossible to predict who exactly will be in this majority, and the behavior of adults in the first months influences the outcome much more strongly than is commonly thought. And one more thing: stuttering does not arise “from fright” - this is the most persistent and most harmful misconception on this topic.