Delayed Speech in Children

Some children have problem in development which may cause delay in their speech and language development. Parents are the first to notice this as they can say their child does not speak well, is not speaking at all or is a late talker.

Causes

There could be a number of reasons for the speech delay such as problem like oral impairment; problem with tongue or palate and limited tongue movements, which reduce speech production.

Some kids have delay in motor response, which means insufficient communication in that area of the brain which holds speech production. In this situation the child has problem in using his lips, tongue and jaws to produce speech. With this not only speech but feeding can also be the part of the problem.

Some children with hearing problems also experience speech problem and this could be tested by an audiologist.

Types of Speech Delay

There are two types of speech delays namely expressive delay and receptive delays.

Expressive delay means inability to generate speech and receptive delay means inability to understand others speech or there can be mixed delay which includes both the above mentioned.

Signs

The warning signs includes if the baby is not waving hands for bye- bye at the age of 12 months, has trouble in making or understanding sounds at 18 months or has difficulty in understanding some simple verbal communication.

For child more than 2 years you should consult a doctor if he can only imitate actions and speech and does not produce words or phrases spontaneously, cannot follow simple instructions, can not use more of language and repeats only certain words and some other symptoms that would be repeated.

Basically, parents and other people should understand a little of what the child is speaking at 2 years of age and at 4 years everybody should understand the child’s language.

Treatment

With any of the above said problems you need to consult a speech therapist. For this he would first understand the cause of the problem by talking to the child, seeing his activities and many more. After coming to the conclusion he would start the treatment.