A 4-year-old child does not speak, but understands everything: reasons, what to do


Timely development of speech is an important part of the development of the personality as a whole.
It is by communicating with others that the child develops intellectually and mentally. Lagging behind peers can lead to not the best results. Cute babbling and mangling of words at a year and a half turns into a big problem at an older age. By the age of 4-5, a child should be able to speak his native language correctly - When should a child start speaking? Norms in speech development. Uninformed parents may rely on the widespread belief that before the age of 5 it is too early to contact a speech pathologist. Like, each child develops individually, and yours is about to speak in detailed sentences.

Is it worth waiting for weather by the sea?

The opinion of experts is definitely no! Undoubtedly, the individual pace of development cannot be denied, but what one could “turn a blind eye to” at 2 years old already requires correction at 4 years old.

The thing is that a problem that is not solved at an earlier age grows like a snowball, creating new ones. Without communication, a child cannot develop properly either intellectually or emotionally. The development of speech goes hand in hand with the mental development of the child. This means that correctional classes will require a lot of effort and time from both the specialist and the student himself.

At the age of 3 years, children’s speech is still in the process of formation, which means that there is not much catching up to do. The main thing is to find the cause in time and try to eliminate it.

What parents should be concerned about:

  • By the age of 4-5 years, the child completely lacks coherent speech. By this age, the child should have completely outgrown baby babble and syllables instead of words. 13 ways to teach a child to speak.
  • The child speaks, but his vocabulary is very poor. Some words are replaced by one or two syllables.
  • The words do not agree with each other in the sentence.
  • The child understands everything that is said to him and can fulfill the request, but cannot express his thoughts.
  • There are many errors in speech, both lexico-grammatical and phonetic.

The easiest way to check if everything is okay with a child is to understand his statements from a stranger. Often in a family, only the mother understands what the child is saying. By the age of five, this is already a reason to contact a specialist.

Speech of a child at 4 years old

What should a 4 year old child be able to do?

At this age, active speech development continues. The vocabulary is growing rapidly. Word creation, writing stories, rhyming words - these are also the creations of four-year-olds. Children are happy to talk about what they saw, what they did, and share their impressions of the events that happened in their lives.

Cognitive activity does not subside either. Inquisitive whys are interested in the internal connections of phenomena: “Why does lightning flash?” or “Why does a rainbow appear?”

Fairy tales become especially beloved because they give ideas about good and evil. Based on this, the child reflects on the actions of his own and those around him. At this age, there is a high need for communication with peers, during which there is an exchange of opinions, demonstration of one’s skills, and a search for mutual understanding.

The reasons for the lack of speech may be more serious

Another important point is the fact that undeveloped speech at the age of 4-5 years may be a manifestation of certain psychological or neurological disorders. This is a reason not only to read books with your child more often, but also to use the help of qualified specialists. Among the causes of speech delay, in addition to physiological lag, mental disorders can also be identified:

  1. Stress. A strong shock experienced by a child can completely stop the development of speech. Only a specialist can talk to him, and the risk of stuttering due to fear is very high.
  2. A difficult psychological atmosphere at home can also lead to speech delays.
  3. Delayed psychomotor and mental development, accordingly, inhibits the formation of speech skills. Therefore, it is extremely important to monitor the child, especially those who speak poorly.
  4. A separate important point should be highlighted neurological causes as a result of a difficult pregnancy or difficult childbirth, head injuries, or even simply too frequent falls of the child. Experts, based on observations, have concluded that in more than 50% of cases, delayed speech formation is a consequence of MMD (minimal cerebral dysfunction).

How to help a child who does not want to talk at 4 years old

What can help be? What can and should be done? Here are some recommendations for parents:

  1. Provide an atmosphere of comfort and warmth at home. Take care of the baby’s psyche - do not sort things out in his presence, avoid quarrels and screams. Kindness towards each other and a desire to help will create a healthy microclimate in the family and become a reliable support in overcoming life’s difficulties.
  2. Talk to your child; comment on all your actions; tell us why you decided to cook this particular dish for lunch; pay his attention to what is happening around him; share with him your mood, your thoughts; ask what he will take with him for a walk today (an Easter cake bucket, a car, or soap bubbles) and why; ask his opinion about how you look today :)
  3. Be in nature, watch how clouds change their shape, listen to the polyphony of birds, watch hardworking ants, release flying ladybugs from your palm, feel the bark of a tree, admire the rainbow.
  4. Perform daily exercises to develop fine motor skills. In this way, those parts of the brain that are responsible for speech are stimulated. All activities where the fingers are actively used are suitable for this. For example, lacing, mosaic, designing, modeling, drawing, fastening buttons and zippers, rearranging cereals or pasta, making puzzles.
  5. Practice articulation and breathing exercises. They are an integral part of speech correction work.
  6. Learn the simplest techniques of speech therapy massage. It normalizes the muscle tone of the speech organs, forms coordination and increases the amplitude of articulatory movements. For example, tapping your lips, cheeks, chin with your fingertips, or rubbing your cheeks in a circular motion.
  7. Practice logorhythmics when movements need to be done to music or combined with speech material. Your little one will surely enjoy stomping their feet, clapping their hands to music, or imitating the movement of a train while listening to a poem.
  8. Read fairy tales, poems, nursery rhymes, children's stories. Look at the illustrations. Write your own scripts. Come up with your own endings to the stories you read. Involve your baby in this process, at least just emotionally :)
  9. Organize communication with peers. Let it only be among them if the child is not in the mood to openly interact with anyone.
  10. Try alternative methods of treatment - hippotherapy, dolphin therapy, if you have such an opportunity. They give good results, having a beneficial effect on the child’s psyche, stimulating the development of fine and gross motor skills, and teaching communication skills.
  11. Be patient, tune in to long-term work, do not expect quick results, in order to avoid irritation when communicating with your child. Organize your time so that you are always in a resourceful state. This is necessary in order to help your baby.


We offer you several speech development games and exercises:

When silence is not golden

Problems with sound pronunciation, clarity and coherence of speech directly affect such mental processes as memory, thinking, attention, etc. This means that prolonged non-speaking leads to deeper disorders. At 4-5 years old, a non-speaking child is diagnosed with OSD - general underdevelopment of speech against the background of normal intelligence and hearing. OHP can be of 4 levels, but any of them is a reason for correction. Considering the age of the children, by this time the gap from their peers is already quite significant, so you will have to study a lot and persistently.

Difficult pregnancy or birth trauma

The baby's nervous system is formed in utero. If there were complications during pregnancy, the expectant mother suffered from viral diseases, and was constantly in a state of stress, then all this could affect the formation of the nervous system.

Another reason is trauma to the skull at birth, which causes disruption of brain activity. More often, this activity is quickly restored, very rarely gives serious disruptions, and it sometimes happens that for this reason the child lags behind in development, in our case, speech.

For both reasons, failures are established at an earlier age. For example, by the age of half a year a child still does not coo, does not smile, does not grab a finger or toys, and much more. But if the injury is not severe, then you can find out about its presence at a later age - by the age of four or five, when the lag in speech is too obvious.

Exercises to develop fine motor skills help activate the speech center in the brain. Many people think that all this is nonsense and speech has nothing to do with fingers. But nerve endings are a mysterious thing, and it is the developed fine motor skills that are responsible for the center of speech. Buy educational games for working with your hands: pulling threads through holes, puzzles, and so on. Just let your child sort through the pasta, with his eyes closed, guess by touch how many holes there are in the button, and so on.

Of course, you cannot do without the professional help of a neurologist and speech therapist, but the proposed exercises will help a lot.

What to do if a child does not speak at 4-5 years old?

If a child does not speak at the age of 4-5 or speaks in such a way that not everyone can understand him, this is a reason to turn to specialists! In order to correctly establish the cause of speech delay, an examination by several specialists will be required:

  • neurologist;
  • speech therapist-defectologist;
  • otolaryngologist;
  • psychologist.

Your local pediatrician can refer you to these specialists. Or you can always contact a specialized center that deals with speech development problems. Don't wait until it may be too difficult to correct violations - the earlier the problem is detected, the easier it is to deal with it!

Date of publication: 06/02/2016. Last modified: 05/09/2018.

Lack of motivation

If in the first paragraph we talked about lack of attention on the part of parents, now let’s talk about excessive care. By pampering your baby with your excessive attention, you take away the motivation to express your desires. For example: you’ve just gotten your hands dirty, and you’re already running with a handkerchief. If this happens in the garden and no one rushes to help him, then the child will not ask for help, but will simply whine, demanding attention.

So, if a 4-year-old child doesn’t talk much and only does it when absolutely necessary, then motivate him! For example, move a dish with candy or fruit higher from an accessible place. Let the child not take what he needs himself, but ask adults for help. He will point his finger at the dish, do not react, say: “Ask normally, in words.” And everything is in the same spirit.

Defectologist classes with children with mental retardation

Currently, the number of children suffering from mental retardation is increasing. Inexplicably, there are more boys with this diagnosis than girls. The sooner parents bring their child to an appointment, a diagnosis is made and treatment and classes begin, the greater the likelihood of success. Doctors often prescribe medication; parents should be sure that it will help and not be afraid of it. The doctor will give advice to parents to deal with the child personally, and not to replace this communication with gadgets. It’s more convenient to give a smartphone and calm down.

Important! The development of a child’s personality from the moment of birth should not be missed!

Experts often advise removing many toys from the children's room. And leave the most useful and favorite ones. In this situation, the child needs to be helped to develop fine motor skills.

This includes:

  • exercises with modeling from plasticine;
  • cutting out simple shapes from paper;
  • collecting mosaics, puzzles;
  • unscrewing covers;
  • game with buttons.

A defectologist will definitely help

Everything should happen under the supervision of parents. And only after motor skills begin to develop, speech development will follow.

How to teach a child to speak the sound [r] without a speech therapist at home

Who is a defectologist, and how can he help?

A specialist who is involved in the training, education, and socialization of children with any developmental disabilities is called a defectologist. There is a speech pathologist in preschool institutions. He examines children in order to find out the degree of cognitive and social activity of the child, the development of speech, helps parents organize the necessary assistance and personally conducts group and individual classes. His task is to correct the deviations that have been identified and help the child cope with them, get him to talk.

Classes of a defectologist with a child with mental retardation are aimed at increasing his cognitive activity and developing basic mental processes. He organizes his activities with the baby in such a way that memory, thinking, imagination, and curiosity are involved in the work. Selects special games to develop fine motor skills, conducts classes and gives recommendations to parents.

Hearing impairment

If the baby does not speak at all by the age of four or all his phrases are confused, even the simplest words are incomprehensible, then he may have hearing impairment. When a baby does not perceive words well by ear, he cannot reproduce them correctly. And the matter may lie not in complete deafness, which is determined earlier, but in partial deafness, which may not be noticed even by a very attentive parent.

Deafness in a child can be hereditary or acquired: intrauterine infection, complications during the mother’s pregnancy, trauma during childbirth, complications after colds in infancy. This will require qualified assistance from an otolaryngologist, neurologist, speech therapist, pediatrician, and so on.

While you are undergoing treatment, do not despair and do not stop your baby’s education. Start speaking more loudly and clearly, work with your child, pronouncing phrases together, reading poems, singing songs - all this greatly helps in the development of speech, and poems and songs are simpler and easier to perceive by ear, even weakened ones.

Doctor's answer: treatment of sensorimotor alalia in Saratov

Dear Olga! We read your question, and a suspicion arose that the girl was diagnosed with sensorimotor alalia of the 2nd - 3rd degree. Unfortunately, you cannot cure alalia with medications alone. In this situation, you need to undergo complex treatment.

Sarklinik provides treatment for alalia in Saratov, treatment for sensory alalia in children in Saratov, therapy for sensorimotor alalia in boys and girls in Saratov, treatment for dyslalia. For treatment you need to contact a reflexologist at Sarklinik. The question of a neurologist is decided individually. Since a neurologist can prescribe mainly medications, his capabilities in the treatment of alalia are often limited to the prescription of nootropic drugs. If possible, you can apply for disability. Anesthesia, as a rule, negatively affects the functioning of the central nervous system.

In the practice of the Sarklinik doctor, there were cases when a child stopped speaking after, for example, an appendectomy, which is always performed under anesthesia, or after vaccination (usually DPT or polio). Moreover, one should not forget about the perinatal encephalopathy that was present in the child. In your situation, you need to carry out planned treatment courses to activate the speech centers of the brain. The effectiveness of treatment for alalia depends on the severity of the disease, the degree of intrauterine hypoxia and the intensity of treatment. The earlier treatment is started, the greater the chance that the child will speak .

Sign up for a consultation. There are contraindications. Specialist consultation is required.

Text: ® SARCLINIC | Sarclinic.com \ Sarсlinic.ru Photo: © AnnaOmelchenko / Photobank Photogenica / photogenica.ru The people depicted in the photo are models, do not suffer from the diseases described and/or all coincidences are excluded.

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Comments ()

Victoria

— July 16, 2021, 12:02 0
the child was diagnosed with atypical autism and given disability for 5 years. How much does a rehabilitation course cost at your clinic? The child is 6 years old. He speaks, but poorly. I don't understand the whole speech.

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