“Norms for speech development of preschool children”

What is the norm of speech development

Pediatricians, neurologists, speech therapists, and teachers rely on the norms of speech development when working with children. These include progress in speaking and emotional development characteristic of each individual period of a child’s life. From birth, specialists observe the baby, how he learns to respond to the voice of an adult, reacts to speech from the outside, begins to “walk”, babble and gradually comes to the full process of speaking.

Psychologists warn that it is not worth relying fully on WHO criteria. Each child is an individual, a person with distinctive qualities. One baby can speak at 2 years old, another at 3, and this will be the norm. The main thing is to respond in a timely manner to the delay in speech development, work with the child, and undergo an examination. Often problems lie in the character traits of the baby.

Norms of speech development by age

It is a mistaken belief that speech begins when the baby utters the first small word. Formation occurs immediately after birth, when the newborn learns to perceive and understand his parents, listen and hear, reproduce sounds (the act of humming), and babble. The first smile is also speech development. Babies under one year old are characterized by emotional gestural communication through movements and facial expressions.

After a year, the time comes when the child can not only show, but also try to explain what he needs. During such a period, it is important to play along with the baby and you can specifically ask him to say a word, to pretend that the adult does not understand the baby. This stimulates cognition and the process of speaking. The child understands that if he wants to get something, he needs to work hard, pronounce the word so that it is understood.

From 0 to one year

The presented table helps to determine whether a child has deviations from the norm and to understand whether it is worth seeking help from a professional. Do not forget that there may be a deviation from the norm of several weeks or a month. Information must be taken in totality. Only if the child lags behind the WHO parameters for several months can you contact a neurologist.

From one year to 7 years

The rudiments of speech actively manifest themselves in the preschool period. At 3 years old, it is important to carry out the first diagnosis and show the child to a speech therapist if there is a developmental delay or neurological problems have arisen. Early consultation will help the child adapt more easily to kindergarten and master the speaking process.

When to see a speech therapist

How to understand when it’s time to seek help from specialists:

• by the age of 3, the vocabulary contains only a few words or just babble;
• in the first half of life, humming does not appear, which may indicate a lack of hearing;
• a three-year-old child points with his finger when he needs something from adults;
• one word denotes different objects (“kika” is candy, a cat, and a book);
• the speech that had already emerged suddenly began to disintegrate and the child fell silent;
• the baby’s statements resemble the speech of a foreigner who has just mastered a foreign language (give me the doll, daddy’s gone);
• he rearranges syllables in words (light - zazhigat);
• movements of the organs of articulation are limited, saliva often flows.

Very often, children with serious speech underdevelopment do not develop fine movements of their fingers; they are clumsy and inactive.

There is a misconception that you should not see a speech therapist until your child is 5 years old. In fact, this is what they do when there is a simple violation of sound pronunciation. The child grows, the muscles of the articulatory apparatus become stronger, and some of the missing sounds appear spontaneously.

In other cases, the sooner a speech therapist, speech pathologist and neurologist diagnose the pathology, the less time it will take to correct it, and the less effort will be required to help the baby.

If you liked the article, please share a link to it

Speech therapist advice

If a neurologist or psychiatrist diagnosed your child with speech development delay (speech development delay) during the first examination, do not panic. Each child has a reserve of time up to 3 years when he can begin to speak. This can happen in a year, ahead of development according to WHO standards, or closer to 3 years. The main thing is to undergo a full examination in case of speech underdevelopment in order to exclude the presence of pathologies of a neurological or organic nature.

If, in addition to the developmental disorder, doctors do not give the child any concomitant diagnoses, the child is completely healthy, speech delay is his individual feature, he will speak later. Parents can help the baby cope with a difficult task faster, for this they need:

• read more fairy tales, sing songs, tell stories and poems to the baby;
• walk in the fresh air and communicate with the baby while walking, discussing surrounding natural phenomena;
• play outdoor and board games, pronouncing colors, shapes, seasons, etc.;
• collect pyramids, cubes, mosaics with your child;
• talk more with the baby, even if he cannot yet fully respond to an adult;
• visit theaters, performances, circus museums.

Enough time should be allocated to communicate with the child. It is advisable to stop watching TV shows and computer games. Attention and parental love will help in speech development and creating a good base for acquiring new knowledge.

How to promote a child’s speech development

Since the development of speech in children in the first year of life is directly related to the development of the brain in the prenatal period, a lot depends on the normal course of pregnancy and childbirth. The development of brain structures can be influenced by a large number of factors:

• genetic predisposition to hereditary pathologies of fetal development;
• stress overload during pregnancy;
• the effects of nicotine and alcohol on the mother’s body;
• insufficient nutrition of the mother;
• lack of oxygen (hypoxia) in the child during pregnancy and childbirth;
• negative Rh factor;
• negative effects of infections and chronic pathologies.

The process of intrauterine development of the brain has a very important feature - its neural connections and structures develop not only under the influence of hereditary genes, but also under the influence of information flows arriving through the still immature, but still functioning sense organs.

An unborn baby is able to hear the sounds of the surrounding world and the beating of the mother’s heart, and feel her movements. That is why women do the right thing when, even before the birth of a child, they read fairy tales to him, talk to him, and listen to good music together. This will help him achieve excellent speech in a few years.

The speech of a one-year-old child includes:

• active vocabulary - from 8 to 12 words that he can pronounce;
• passive dictionary - words whose meaning the baby understands.

A strong leap in the development of passive vocabulary occurs after the first six months of a baby’s life, provided that parents actively introduce him to the meanings of words. Parents can convey information to him through gestures, voice intonation, and facial expressions, but the leading role here belongs to the word.

When talking to the baby during feeding, dressing, and hygiene procedures, adults convey to him the meaning of words denoting objects and actions. Even without initially understanding the meaning of the parents’ words, the child grasps the emotional coloring of the speech, he realizes that they are addressing him, and he has a desire to respond. Therefore, those mothers and fathers who talk to the baby from the first months of his life are right.

Even in the first year of life, a normally developing child has the ability to understand that different objects are called the same word. “Kisa” is a live cat, a soft toy, and a porcelain figurine behind a glass cabinet. “B-B” is both a real car, a plastic car on a string, and a picture in a children’s book. The ability to understand general words can be developed by the end of the first year by attentive parents who tirelessly introduce the baby to various objects and phenomena in his environment.

A very important skill in the first year of life is understanding the meanings of a large number of words denoting action. The child understands not only the designations of large movements (stand, run, eat), but also words meaning small actions performed by the hand (unclench your fist, give your hand, show what is in your hand, let go).

Speech development is a process closely related to the development of the baby’s sensory abilities. Sensory education is the development of a child’s perception, distinguishing the shape and color of surrounding objects. Sensory abilities can be developed from the first days of a baby’s life by surrounding him with interior items and toys that are expressive in color. To develop hearing, you can more often offer him harmonious-sounding toys, musical instruments, and emotionally communicate with the child.

The sounds he pronounces should be duplicated, repeated several times. All manipulations related to eating, washing and other procedures need to be spoken out, and you need to communicate with the child more often, not out of necessity, but to establish contact. By repeating after the baby the combinations of sounds he pronounces, adults seem to stimulate him to new imitation. It is important to remember that such activities will not bring results if the child is hungry, cold, tired, etc.

In the second half of the year, you need to look at objects and toys more often, naming them, and accompanying the child’s movements with words. To stimulate children's speech, it is very important to evoke the baby's need to speak. For these purposes, you can not immediately give the toy that he asks for, but wait for a verbal reaction (“Lala, bi-bi”).

You can ask your child questions, the answer to which is the words “yes” or “no,” and offer onomatopoeia if the child has difficulty naming an object: “What should I give you? A dog? Av-av?", "Where is the car? Where is B.B.?” This strategy of parental behavior will bring significant results in the form of active speech activity.

The motor skills of a baby in the first year of life are divided into two types:

1. gross or gross motor skills - the ability to sit, bend, approach, stand;
2. fine motor skills - feeling objects, grasping small toys with tweezers (with two fingers), rolling a car, drawing “doodles”.

The development of fine motor skills leads to a leap in speech development. If the parents taught the child to wave his hand when saying goodbye, to extend it when saying hello, then the one-year-old child will perform these movements, as soon as an adult asks him about it.

An attentive mother and father stimulate the baby’s movements with the words: “Get up, lie down, sit down, take it, put it down, pick it up.” A little later, as soon as the child starts walking, they add: “Go, come, stop.” You can teach your child to refrain from an incorrect action or impulse with the word “no” pronounced with a strict intonation. It is important to remember that this word should not be abused, otherwise the ban simply will not apply. Endless “don’ts” will become just background noise and will “fly past your ears.”

If a child does something wrong, you need to offer a replacement for his wrong actions, for example: “You can’t hit the kitty on the back, you can pet him.” And then show how to “iron”. It may not work out the first time, but with regular repetition everything will be learned very firmly. With an active exploration of the surrounding world, the prohibited word will become a kind of boundary of personal space. The big world frightens the baby, and such boundaries are vital for him to feel more confident.