The child does not say “mom”. How to teach?

There is a joke - first parents wait for the child to speak, and then they can’t wait for him to shut up.
Little explorers of the world are called “why girls”, they are interested in everything and with their questions and conversations they are able to “chat” the most patient mother. However, there are also silent people. Now all the peers are talking with all their might, but this kid doesn’t even say “mom.” From a certain age, this situation causes justifiable concern among parents.

When should you worry?

Each child has a “convenient” pace of development. One began to babble earlier, the other was the first to sit down or stand up, and the third walked and spoke before his comrades in the sandbox. If age-related variations occur within a couple of months, there is no need to worry.

However, all parents need to know the norms of children’s speech development. If the lag becomes significant (and speech therapists consider a delay of no more than 2-3 months to be a normal option for a particular skill), it is better to seek advice from a specialist.

Children usually begin to say the notorious word “mother” by the age of one or one and a half years. What if the first birthday has been celebrated a long time ago, but the long-awaited word is still missing? Is it time to go to the doctors?

Consulting a specialist never hurts. When it comes to speech development, you shouldn’t wait for everything to form “somehow on its own.” However, in order not to panic ahead of time, take a closer look at your baby. It is quite possible that he is simply a little delayed in pronouncing the words so expected by his parents and nothing terrible happens. Important factors:

A one-year-old child understands speech addressed to him. That is, it responds to its own name and gives an adequate reaction to the words of its parents.
There are no hearing or vision impairments.
The baby's cooing was replaced by babbling speech. The child is already trying to designate specific words with some kind of imitative syllables.
In games, there is a noticeable desire to repeat after an adult and perform given actions.

At an early age, the process of speech formation is closely related to the development of the psyche and thinking. Parents should keep an eye on these aspects. If any suspicions still arise, it is best to seek advice from specialists.

Who to visit:

neurologist;
child psychologist;
speech therapist-defectologist.

Features of speech development

For the rapid and correct development of a child’s speech apparatus, you should talk to him a lot . You can start communicating with your baby from the prenatal period, because the conversation between a mother and her unborn child has only a positive effect on both. Moreover, at 7–9 months of pregnancy, the fetus perfectly senses sound vibrations.

Don't stop talking to your baby after he's born. Communication between a mother and her baby should be continuous. Even if he doesn’t understand anything and doesn’t smile back at you, the baby still hears your speech.

Also remember that six-month-old children need to observe their parents’ articulatory apparatus, because it is during this period of time that the baby begins to notice the connection between sounds and lip movements. The baby himself begins to imitate his mother or father.

If parents have the proper patience and regularly work with the child, the baby masters speech quite quickly. If you add to this the daily repetition of words, creating images, your vocabulary will increase even faster.

How to teach a child to say “mama”?

So, if your baby, according to doctors, is developing in accordance with the norm, he does not have any special problems, but for some reason he has not started talking, parents can force things a little.

The main condition for the correct formation of speech is communication. The biggest misconception of some mothers and fathers is that they think that the child does not understand them yet, and therefore there is no need to talk to him. This is not true at all!

The more you communicate with your baby, the more words will be in his passive vocabulary. This means that over time they will become active. In addition, it is by listening to speech addressed to him that the child learns to speak!

How to communicate with a small child:

Use the correct forms of words in your speech. Undoubtedly, many kids say “bo-bo” about a scratch or “beep-beep” about all types of transport. This sounds very nice, but parents should not make it easy for their child to learn. Let the “long” words remain in a passive form for some time, but over time the baby will speak as he should!
Try to speak in simple words that the child can understand. Repeat them many times every day.
Speak as clearly as possible and face your baby. It is by “reading” articulation that the child learns to pronounce new words.
Create the illusion of dialogue. Ask questions and answer them yourself. But take a short break, give the child the opportunity to insert a familiar word at one point.
Talk about everything. Comment on the process of dressing, washing, talk about what you see while walking, and so on. After all, the baby learns the world with the help of his parents.
Do not turn on television or radio in the background. Such sounds are not perceived by small children as speech, which means they will not teach him anything.
Use your pacifier less often. How will a baby talk if his mouth is always busy? In addition, constant sucking can ruin your bite and lead to poor articulation.

What to do if a child does not speak at 3 years old

Pediatricians say that parents and loved ones should understand the speech of a three-year-old child. However, this is not an entirely true statement. It is much more important to evaluate not the speech itself, but its dynamics.

For example, if your child speaks ten words at three years old and at four years old, then you should think about it and start working on this issue.

If your three-year-old child speaks a small number of words, and at four years his vocabulary exceeds 20–30 words, then there is no need to worry, because you are seeing a trend for the better.

If you notice problems with speech in a child, go to a child psychotherapist or psychologist.

Consequences of developmental delay

Parents who expect their child to speak by age 3-4 should understand that lack of speech can lead to various disorders:

mental retardation;
ticks;
psychological problems.

To eliminate developmental delays, neurological, psychological and speech therapy assistance is required. By age 7, a child should be ready for school. If therapy is not provided to a child, developmental delays can affect his entire future life.

The causes of speech disorders can be:

Unfavorable heredity and unhealthy lifestyle of future parents: occupational hazards, drug addiction, alcoholism and smoking, abortion.
Adverse factors potentially affecting the child's future speech during pregnancy: toxicosis of pregnancy, acute and chronic diseases of the mother during pregnancy (influenza, rubella, kidney and heart failure, etc.), Rhesus conflict, falls and bruises of the mother during pregnancy, acute stressful situations, complications during childbirth.
Unfavorable circumstances during early development: head injuries, concussions and bruises of the brain, inflammatory diseases of the brain (meningitis), untreated inflammatory diseases of the middle and inner ear, abnormalities in the structure of the jaws and teeth as a result of injuries.
Social factors: bilingualism in the family, the presence of speech defects in people around the child, a situation where parents deliberately “adjust” to the child’s speech, “libble” with him or, on the contrary, are inattentive to the child’s speech.

So, you have discovered that your child does not pronounce all sounds correctly and he “swallows” some words. What to do in such cases? Contact a speech therapist immediately and do not wait until your child’s sound pronunciation “on its own” becomes normal! Most often, delayed speech development affects the entire development of the child - it does not allow him to fully communicate with peers, and aggravates the emotional and mental state of the child. However, if you help the child in time, using all methods of developing and activating speech, these serious problems can be successfully solved.

Affects everyone

Denial, anger, acceptance—probably all parents go through these main stages when faced with hearing loss in their young child.

If, while still in the maternity hospital, a baby is diagnosed with critical hearing loss or deafness, adults have little time for doubts and worries. On the contrary, so that the detected problem does not have time to affect the further development of the child, you need to act quickly, carry out an operation - cochlear implantation - as soon as possible.

But it also happens that the baby grows, develops and... does not immediately lose his hearing. Then parents may miss the onset of hearing loss and not recognize this fact for a long time. It seems to them that the child’s development is going according to plan (it seems that everything was fine during the medical examination at the clinic, and the child does not complain about anything). And having learned about the problem, they may even refuse to acknowledge it - this is a kind of defensive reaction.

How to prevent hearing loss in children?

If this is due to heredity, genetic disorders, then, alas, at this stage of development of medical science - nothing. The main advice is not to neglect an annual hearing test; in this case, “overdoing it” is better than missing out. At an early stage, hearing loss is easier to detect and correct.

Violations associated with complications after illnesses can be tried to be prevented, of course, only by protecting yourself from these diseases, hardening yourself, and not ignoring treatment and rehabilitation.

You should also try to avoid prolonged exposure to noise. It’s not scary if a person finds himself in an environment with loud sounds for a few minutes. But when a teenager wears headphones all day long, and the music from them can be heard from the other side of the room, this is already dangerous. Many scientific works confirm the connection between the development of hearing loss and chronic noise injuries. This, of course, is not a reason to quarrel with your daughter or teenage son and completely deprive them of those headphones. The currently recognized safe standard is to spend no more than 2-3 hours a day wearing high-quality professional headphones with a volume below 80 dB. It’s enough to play games and enjoy your favorite music.

Everything needs to be approached wisely. And be healthy!

What can a speech therapist do?

During speech therapy classes, work is carried out in the following areas:

Formation of correct sound pronunciation;
Development of articulatory movements, movements of the speech organs (lips, cheeks, tongue);
Improving phonemic processes
Improving the grammatical structure of speech;
Enrichment, activation of speech vocabulary;
Development of fine motor skills of the hands, preparation of the hand for writing;
Development of coherent speech;
Improving the prosodic side of speech, including developing diction, expressiveness of speech, proper breathing, working on correct stress, and tempo of speech.

Speech therapy work is carried out 2 times a week. Work schedule is individual.

What exactly do we do in speech therapy classes?

Lexico-grammatical lessons.

A specific lexical topic is taken, within the framework of which the work is carried out:

To expand and activate the dictionary;
By practicing the correct use of grammatical categories (changing nouns by gender, number, case; using verbs in different tenses; agreeing nouns with adjectives and numerals in gender, number, case);
By identifying prepositions in speech, developing an understanding of their meaning;
For training, answer the question posed in complete sentences, etc.

Classes for the development of coherent speech include learning to retell; storytelling based on a picture or a series of pictures, according to a plan-scheme; memorizing poems; guessing and memorizing riddles. In classes on the development of phonemic hearing, the child learns to distinguish sounds by ear, to isolate them from speech (“Say a word,” “Repeat a series of sounds, words in the same order,” “Say the opposite,” etc.).

Classes on the development of mental processes: perception, memory, thinking, attention and classes on the development of fine motor skills: finger massage, finger gymnastics, the formation of accuracy and motor dexterity.

Sound pronunciation classes include the following steps:

Articulation exercises;
Correction of sound pronunciation, including production, automation of sound, its differentiation from similar sounds.

Remember that to overcome speech defects, systematic, long-term correctional work is necessary, in which parents play a significant role, since the child spends most of his time at home with people close to him!

Parents should form the correct attitude towards a child’s speech disorder:

Do not scold for incorrect speech;
Unobtrusively correct incorrect pronunciation;
Do not focus on hesitations and repetitions of syllables and words;
Encourage the child to have a positive attitude during classes with a speech therapist;
Parents should pay special attention to homework.

The main task of parents is to pay attention to various violations of their child’s oral speech in a timely manner in order to begin speech therapy work with him before school, to prevent communication difficulties in a group and poor performance in secondary school.

The sooner the correction is started, the better the result!