Child speech at 4 years old Diagnosis of disorders and useful exercises

Features of speech development at 4 years of age

Children's environment

The level of speech development at this age depends as much as possible on the environment of your son or daughter. What is meant by this? Firstly, family upbringing.

Parents should not brush their children off when they want to talk. Know how to listen to them at any time. Moreover, be the initiator of the conversation yourself. Make sure your speech is correct. You are still the main example for your child.

Secondly, a highly qualified teacher and a good kindergarten also have an impact. At this age, the child spends 50/50 time at home and in kindergarten. Therefore, it is very important to find a suitable institution and a teacher who knows his business. However, one cannot blame all the work aimed at the development of a child on grandmothers, nannies and educators.

Thirdly, do not forget about the correct fiction and its availability in general. If you have a choice between buying a new toy or a book, then don’t hesitate to buy the book.

Read with your child as much as possible. Create assignments based on books. For example, change the ending or compose a story based on a picture, etc.

Originality of speech

All of the above can be attributed to the human factor. Now let's talk about more specific features. The main difference between the vocabulary of this age is that more adjectives appear in speech.

This is due to the fact that it becomes important for children to clarify the qualities and characteristics of an object. Also in speech the number of prepositions and pronouns increases.

As for the grammatical structure, a distinctive feature of children's speech is the frequent use of more complex sentences. Errors are becoming less common, but they still occur: incorrect sentence structure, incorrect gender and number agreement, and erroneous verb endings.

In terms of sound pronunciation, articulation is becoming better, more trained and more confident. At this age, speech therapists in kindergarten begin to work with children. So, if any problem occurs, they will help you. Just be careful with your child in order to notice any violations in time.

How can parents help?

If everything is fine with the baby, you should not think that his speech will form on its own. It has already been said here what problems are typical for children 3–4 years old. These are what you need to work on, constantly playing exciting games with children that develop speech.

So, what exactly needs the attention of adults now?

• Logical thinking, attention, memory. This will allow the child to remember more of what he read or saw, reason about it, draw conclusions, and express his thoughts consistently.
• The ability to use words in speech syntactically correctly (use gender, number, case, person to use the correct endings).
• Expanding vocabulary. This is one of the most important aspects of speech development, allowing the baby to speak fully, clearly and widely.
• Mastering different forms of speech (dialogue, monologue, description).
• Working on improving articulation. This is important so that the baby can quickly master sounds that are difficult for him (you can read more about articulatory gymnastics here).
• Expressiveness, tempo, intonation. The child needs to be taught to speak with the right strength of voice, according to the situation, to color speech emotionally, not to jabber or drag out words.
• Phonemic hearing. It is important for a child to learn to correctly perceive each sound in a word, to hear the number of syllables and their order.
• Fine motor skills. It will help the child improve pronunciation and activate the brain centers responsible for speech development (examples of games for the development of motor skills can be found here - “Hand motor skills for speech development”).

Pay special attention to those problems that your child has specifically (perhaps he cannot group objects according to common characteristics, or does not pronounce specific sounds, or has difficulty remembering text).

Norms of speech development for 4-year-old children

1. The child uses words exactly according to their meaning.
2. His vocabulary includes all parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numerals.
3. Able to describe a picture in 7-8 sentences.
4. The baby is able to control the volume of speech.
5. The speech has an expressive intonation.
6. Correct speech rate.
7. The child is able to learn simple rhymes and songs.
8. The pronunciation of all sounds is correct, but problems may arise with l, r, sh, sch, ts.

Basic knowledge and skills at 4 years old

What a child should be able to do at four years old - basic knowledge and skills:

• good control of your body: confidently move and navigate in space;
• be able to count to five and know what numbers up to five look like;
• it is enough to speak well: speech should become clearer compared to the age of three;
• possess self-service skills;
• understand some social norms: for example, distinguish good actions from bad ones.

Speech delay

There are two main causes of disorders: biological and social. The first is associated with developmental disorders of the child while still in the womb (asphyxia, prematurity, trauma during childbirth, etc.).

In addition, complex and serious vaccinations may affect the delay. Or, for example, hearing loss.

The second is that social reasons depend on the child’s environment. This may be a lack of growth stimulus, untimely development, stressful situations, lack of communication, etc.

Social causes are usually easier to deal with than biological ones. But in any case, it is important to notice violations in time and contact a specialist. Let's list some examples of speech delay.

• incorrect pronunciation of complex words;
• cannot form a sentence of more than 2-3 words;
• vocabulary is poor (mainly consists of words found in everyday life);
• articulation is impaired;
• does not notice mistakes in himself or others.

Psychological condition

Four-year-old children do not feel fear well - the task of parents is to tell their son or daughter about possible dangers: about potentially dangerous household appliances, about stray animals, about walking alone.

Normally, a psychologically developed child at the age of four should:

• take into account the assessment of your behavior by significant adults: parents, educators;
• be as independent as possible;
• be able to serve yourself in accordance with your age.

Diagnosis of disorders

You can diagnose speech development with your child at home. There are several tasks for this, based on the results of which you can draw certain conclusions.

1. Ask your child to name words from pictures: toys, furniture, animals, seasons.
2. Also, using these pictures, ask about the qualities of these items.
3. Invite the children to carry out some of your instructions: bring a toy, draw a tree, etc.
4. For a grammatical study of speech, ask your child to: change the number of a noun, count objects and pronounce affectionate words using a diminutive suffix.
5. In order to determine the level of development of phrasal speech, ask your child to complete your sentence. To make this task easier, you can use pictures with a suitable plot.

Motor skills

The coordination of a four-year-old child is developing better and better, acquired motor skills are consolidated and new ones appear:

• knows how to jump high and far, knows how to somersault;
• tries to hit the target with the ball, catches and holds the ball with both hands;
• standing on one leg, maintains balance for at least 10 seconds, makes several jumps on one leg;
• becomes quite flexible, easily tilting the body from a standing or sitting position, for example, in order to put on shoes;
• can walk on tiptoes;
• Dresses and undresses without adult help, or with little help if you need to cope with a difficult fastener or laces.

How to help your baby with speech development?

Train your articulation muscles. To do this, you can play various games. For example, play hide and seek with your tongue, tap your teeth with it, make it narrow or wide, etc. We invite you to watch a video of exercises for the lips and tongue - articulatory gymnastics:

Here are some more important tips that you can follow to avoid speech disorders and improve your child’s speech.

1. Encourage your children's desire to communicate. Let them share their impressions, talk about their interests, ask you and those around you a thousand questions. Try to always find time for this.
2. If the child does not want to communicate, stimulate him yourself. Be the conversation starter. Find topics of conversation that will interest your baby.
3. Read as many fairy tales, stories, and poems as possible with your child. Sing children's songs together.
4. Make crafts with your child (for example, about your favorite fairy tale characters), while communicating and describing each course of action.
5. Add game elements to your exercises. Kids are very interested in finger games or puppet theaters.

Useful video about how to develop and shape a child’s speech at 4 years old:

Dear future or current parents, devote enough energy and time to your children! After all, this contributes to their correct and successful development. I hope the article about a child’s speech at 4 years old was useful to you. Leave your comments and share your experience. Goodbye!

Fine motor skills

The development of a baby’s speech and the correct development of thinking and memory depend on well-developed fine motor skills. It’s good if by the age of four the child has the following fine motor skills:

• colors pictures without going beyond the outline;
• tries to keep the pencil straight when drawing dots, does not lift his hand from the sheet of paper;
• traces samples and stencils with a pencil;
• launches the spinning top;
• folds his fingers, showing shapes, for example, “flashlight”;
• laces his own shoes or at least tries to manage the laces;
• strings buttons or beads with large holes onto a thread;
• Cuts out paper shapes with scissors fairly smoothly.

If your child does not yet master each of these skills, it is easy to help him: together learn to tie shoelaces, play with beads, show how to make finger figures.

When should you worry about your child's development?

Features of a child that at the age of four may indicate developmental delay:

• cannot concentrate on one activity even for a few minutes;
• does not control emotions, outbursts of aggression occur;
• does not play with toys and is not interested in them;
• does not use complex sentences in speech, generally has difficulty expressing thoughts orally;
• too mobile or, conversely, very slow.

If you notice such symptoms in a child, consult your local pediatrician.

conclusions

So, 4 years is a period of discovery, both for the baby and for his parents. A four-year-old child actively learns about himself and the world, his abilities and talents manifest themselves. The skills acquired earlier continue to be improved. The child’s intensive physical, mental and personal development occurs: the baby learns to control his body and emotions, memory, attention, thinking, speech and imagination develop. Four-year-olds simply need to communicate with their peers, because the development of children occurs mainly in role-playing games.