In many cases, many years pass from the moment of the occurrence of a standstill in the development of speech and language to its diagnosis.
During this time, trying to get answers to their concerns, parents visit numerous institutions. Though, they are unconscious of the fact that the time that passes is challenging to recover.
Namely, they are not aware that there’s a so-called critical period for the development of speaking and language. Each level of the mentioned development is related to a certain age. If this period is missed, it’s difficult to recover.
We will give you critical facts about a child’s language development with a glimpse into baby’s first sounds and words.
But first, let us dive into preconditions of how does speech form and how does it function. After which we’ll address the normal course of speech and language development.
How to Stimulate a Child to Speak Properly?
To enable a child to master the speech, a combination of biological and environmental factors is necessary. Heritage, average intelligence, preserved hearing, developed motifs of speaking organs. All of the above is not enough without the stimulating nature of the surrounding environment.
To speak, a child must be stimulated by the speech. And that so – by the adequate speaking models. It includes being motivated and emotionally satisfied. Having a positive reciprocal parent-child-parent relationship is also a must.
Walking, for example, is based on the principle of ‘all or nothing’. A child on average starts to walk with 12 months and stabilizes the walk with 14 to 15 months.
Baby starts to speak mostly around the ninth month. But the speech develops until the fifth or seventh year.
To develop it, the baby has to be continuously encouraged. If a child’s left without adequate vocable stimulus, the oration will not evolve, or will not do so correctly.
How Do Speech and Language Evolve?
The dynamics of speech and language development are individual for every child.
Of course, there’s an average age that is associated with certain phases in the development of speech and language — but also hearing, a condition for the appearance of speech.
The period before the appearance of the first word is called prelingual. Its features are beating, vocalizing and chattering.
The lingual period begins with thebaby’s first words. Some children utter them around their 9th month, while other around 15th or 16th month.
The Normal Course of Speech and Language Development
On average, the normal development of language looks like this:
From the 3rd, 4th Day After Birth
The newborn reacts to the human voice. In this period, the earliest contacts of the vocal organs are exercised through cry.
From the 2nd Month
The baby begins to express her satisfaction through the voicing of sounds. The evolvement of the hearing attention has a significant role in the development in this timeframe.
From the 5th, 6th Month
And there it begins – the chatter. It abounds with combinations of vowels and consonants’ forms of future voices. Babies also start to laugh.
From the 6th to the 8th Month
The child intensely reacts to its name.
From the 8th to the 12th Month
The baby uses more words with the same syllables. It listens and imitates sounds from its surroundings (animal noises, public transport and so forth).
From the 12th to the 18th Month
The toddler understands when you tell him, ’Come,’ ’Bring,’ ’Let’s go’. It recognizes objects, parts of the body, and simple questions. For example, when you ask: ’Where is this?’; ’What does this show?’.
Some words child signifies with syllables. It has a so-called active vocabulary of 10 to 20 words and uses phrases of two words.
From the 18th Month to the 2nd Year
The child responds to: ’Show me the house, the man, the aunt, the hat …’. It can show the doll’s eye, nose, mouth. He understands the tasks like: ’Sit on the chair’; ’Bring the shoes’.
It uses sentences of up to three words, names some objects: ball, key, clock, doll. Knows to use nouns, pronouns, verbs. It answers the question like ’What’s your name?’, and ’How does a dog bark?’.
The child’s dictionary is enriching, and it uses up to 300 words. It pronounces all vowels and about 25% of consonants.
Listening to stories and songs while watching pictures is a child’s favorite activity.
What if in Some Age Period Some of the Speech Activities are Missing?
If these spoken activities are missing, it’s time to check your child’s hearing.
If the early development of speech and language does not flow according to the given pattern, don’t offhand blame yourself. But also do not comfort yourself with an empty belief that the child has no objection, and therefore does not speak.
Because every child has a clear need for speaking, communication in general. And if it does not exist, you must look for the reasons why. Basis may be related to hearing, to speech organs. Or some other causes like children’s emotional and social development.
Parents should continuously monitor a child’s response to sounds of varying strength. They should stimulate their kid intensely by speaking. Encourage it to repeat some voices and syllables.
Parent’s detection is necessary, but not sufficient. Consulting the speech therapist is essential.
Conclusion
Our learnings of speech begin from the earliest stages of our life – birth. From the first cries and babbling to the repetitions of parent’ words.
The child tries to mimic all the senses and collected information from the environment, thus creating its speech.
A learned speech is adequate if intellectual development is normal and if all organs of speech and hearing are neatly developed.
For a preschool goer, the pronunciation of words should be more or less in line with the book. The child should correctly and skillfully usethe grammar of the mother tongue.
The linguistic level that is reached is a prerequisite for the development of reading and writing. Therefore, if all of the above is satisfied the child is ready for school.
