Children experience several bodily changes in early stages of their life. Typically, their first couple of years consist of them learning how to crawl, walk, babble, and speak. However, every once in a while, toddlers do not form skills according to typical biological progression. But these concerns are nothing to worry too much about since they can be managed through sessions with qualified speech therapists. Some children suffer drawbacks when attempting to pronounce specifics words or letters. Hence, hiring speech therapists helps preemptively eliminate any future speech related issues.
However, we would like to reiterate that these problems are nothing to lose sleep over as a study done by University of Michigan’s Michigan Medicine. Reports that speech and language afflictions can be provoked. Due to various elements like hearing loss or developmental disorders and can be fixed through professional assistance. Considering the broad spectrum of potential causes. It is paramount to seek help for these concerns as soon as they become noticeable.
Speech Therapist will help you
Often, help in these scenarios takes the shape of speech therapists. Speech therapy services, as reported by American Speech Language Hearing Association, help diagnose and alleviate speech and language disorders. Your speech therapist can assess and treat various issues starting from articulation complications to language disorders. Speech therapists provide vital information that will aide your toddler in their relationship to speech correction.
However, it is key to note that discerning early signs plays a crucial role in your child’s chances of quick recovery from speech disorders. Though every child develops and progresses at their own naturally set pace. Sometimes there might be signs that indicate unusual developments that can significantly, and negatively, alter your toddler’s life.
Knowing what is normal behavior, and what isn’t. When it comes to speech and language development can help parents cut the problem at the root and stop it from disseminating. We have collected and listed down some underlying speech impediment issues that you need your toddler evaluated for:
You notice a lack of interaction
If your toddler is not smiling at, acknowledging. Or interacting with anyone’s attempt at communication then you might have to look for high quality speech therapy at home with autism. From infancy to 3 months of age. You have to hawkeye your baby’s social tendencies because such signs can appear on the surface early on. If your infant does not babble or makes only a few sounds or gestures such as pointing. With no signs of further progression then that is a clear red flag. If your toddler (7 months to 2 years) shows symptoms of not grasping what you or others are saying. Then you must consider that as well.
You notice your toddler only makes few sounds or gestures
Often kids start to sound out a couple of words or vowels from your native lexicon between 7 to 18 months. Somewhere within ages 1 and a half and 2 they are making attempts to piece words together by learning from adult communication around them. Hence, it is necessary to see whether your child is responding to your bids of social interaction with them. As we mentioned above. If your toddler is not expressing or seems to have a limited reservoir of words, then you have to get speech therapy at home.
You find it difficult to comprehend what your toddler is saying
Though it is not uncommon for only mother and fathers to be able to understand what the toddler is saying, considering the endless hours they spend with them, they should not have too much trouble deciphering their child’s speech when they are between 18 months or 2 years. Your toddler’s speech should be mostly comprehensible to you by this point, and if it is not you might want to look into speech therapy services.
You notice your child has not commenced formulating phrases or sentences
Often around the age of 18 months children start to explore their language and make efforts in sentence formation. You should be hearing them say phrases like “My toy” or “See, Mom”. If you don’t notice these progressions between their ages of 1 ½ and 3 then you might want to consult speech therapists.
You notice your child struggling to make sounds
Whereas some sounds are tougher to pronounce more than others, the rest tend to roll of the tongue relatively easily. For instance, alphabets like K or G might seem far more onerous for an 18 month old child to pronounce than M, P, and B. However, if you notice that your child is experiencing trouble with easier sounds or your 3- to 4-year-old cannot get around to sounding out the “harder” alphabets then you need to obtain speech therapy at home.
The degree of importance that speech therapy holds in eradicating your child’s speech and language disorders is immeasurable. Someone with speech issues should be started off at an early age. Like when they are a toddler so that they can communicate their basic daily needs to others. In fact, there are other sporadically occurring speech issues that can be diagnosed and treated by speech therapists as well.
Articulation skills
Articulation pertains to a person’s ability to produce clear and intelligible speech sounds by accurately using their jaw, tongue, lips, and palate. Speech therapists can help children make a habit of using these elements of the mouth. To produce coherent speech that everyone around them understands and responds to. During the speech therapy at home the therapist would zone in on the more difficult to pronounce words. As well and build confidence within your toddler to sound them out on a daily basis.
Cognitive communication
A cognitive communication disorder is described as the destruction of human cognitive process such memory, attention, awareness, abstract reasoning. Along with other functions like problem solving, self-regulation etc. These can be inherent, an independently occurring natural birth defect, or a result of head trauma. Speech therapists help your child develop these skills or train them to use methods that compensate for these deficits.
Giving way to expressiveness
A speech therapist can help your child learn new words and also teach them how to turn them into coherent sentences or phrases. This will allow your toddler to communicate even more clearly in the future and remain motivated to build their lexicon in the future.
Language reception and listening
Reception of language points at your child’s capability of listening and interpreting language. Children are naturally born with strong receptive language skills as compared to expressive language skills (what they are able to convey). Speech therapists help children build a reservoir of words that they can use to participate in run of the mill everyday conversations.
Speech therapists can play a key role in instilling valuable speech, language, and social skills within your child. They will help your child foray into a more normal and easier to manage life by teaching them pertinent skills of communication. Make sure that the speech therapy services. You are picking out are being offered by high quality healthcare institutes like Premier Home Health Agency. Usually such institutes devote a lot of time and resources to research and advance their medical services.
