How to develop speech in a child: development standards, games and exercises to stimulate a child’s speech development

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There is no certain period of time during which one can and should intensively engage in the development of speech - and that’s it - as if by a wave of a magic wand, the baby took and spoke in whole sentences.
This is a rather lengthy process and takes its own time for each individual child. Parents lay the foundations on which knowledge and skills are laid like bricks. Speech development is not only dealt with from one to two years of age, until the child speaks - this is a process that has no clear boundaries. Many adults are actively developing and improving their speech and speech skills.

Factors on which speech development depends

Each child is individual, but psychologists and speech therapists identify four main factors that influence speech development:

Anatomical features - the correct structure and functioning of the speech apparatus (tongue, palate, larynx, vocal folds), correct breathing.

As soon as the baby is born, he is immediately examined by a neonatologist and pediatrician, and during the first year of life by other specialists - a neurologist, dentist, etc. This is done in order to exclude various birth defects, to identify any diseases or predispositions in the early stages, and also prevent the development of the disease.

If deviations from normal development are detected, the doctor will be able to recommend correcting the anatomical defect, or preparing for subsequent correction. For example, a shortened frenulum does not allow the tongue to fully move in the oral cavity, and it does not reach the palate. Thus, it predetermines the occurrence of incorrect sound pronunciation.

Physiological component. The connection between the brain and fine motor skills has long been proven - by developing small hands, you can activate speech centers.

There are a huge number of finger games and activities aimed at developing tactile sensations (various cereals, objects of different shapes and sizes, etc.). The most well-known and beloved game is “Magic Bag”.

Emotional component. This is, first of all, a close emotional connection with mom and dad.

It is considered ideal for a child to communicate with grandparents (on both sides), brothers and sisters. The more the baby communicates with his family, the faster he joins in the conversation with them (he will wink at some, “hug” at others, and say something to others).

Social component. First, the baby begins to communicate with his parents by screaming, when this is the only way he can say that he is experiencing discomfort, then, when recognizing familiar faces, he fixes his gaze, begins to smile, reaches out with his arms, etc. Therefore, everything that the child does is important - be sure to express emotionally your joy, tenderness, admiration.

In addition, in addition to the above factors, many specialists (speech therapists, psychologists, speech pathologists) indicate the influence of the speech of others - especially correct from the point of view of phonetics. For example, if one of the parents “burrs,” then most likely the son or daughter will do this based on imitation of a significant adult.
In this case, it is advisable to correct the pronunciation of the sound P in parallel between the child and the adult.

How a child’s speech is formed from birth to 3 years

The baby learns to communicate with the outside world from the very moment of birth. Let's take a look at how the speech development of young children occurs during the first 3 years of a child's life.

Norms of speech development in children from 0 to 3 years old

0 – 2 months. Scream. The first form of communication for a child is crying. The baby cries when he is hungry, uncomfortable or tired.
2 – 3 months. Booming. Crying is replaced by cheering. The sounds “a”, “s”, “u” appear, sometimes in combination with “g”. The child learns to understand speech addressed to him and control his own sound intonations.
3 – 6 months. Babble. The baby begins to babble to himself and make sounds when addressed to him. Turns his head towards the sound. Freezes in response to a sudden loud sound. Cries differently depending on needs: “I’m hungry,” “I’m tired.” Recognizes his name and reacts to it.
6 months. First syllables. From the age of 6 months, you can notice that the child prefers strictly certain sounds to all others: “ba”, “ma” (they are the easiest to learn to pronounce). He can repeat them endlessly: he likes the way they sound.
7 – 9 months. Combinations of syllables. The babbling progresses to the utterance of identical syllables: “ma-ma-ma”, “dya-dya-dya”, “ba-ba-ba”.
9 – 11 months . Onomatopoeia. The baby imitates the sounds of adults' speech. Responds to name. Understands the meaning of the word “no.”
11 – 13 months. The first meaningful words from two identical syllables: “dad”, “mom”, “baba”, “uncle”.
12 months. The baby shows interest and attention to the speech of others, repeats and combines sounds in a new way, combines them into “words”, imitating the speech of an adult. Understands and follows simple one-word instructions (“sit down”). He waves his hand “bye-bye”, shakes his head “no”. Uses gestures and sounds to attract attention. Interested in books.

Rarely does a parent know what signs indicate deviations in the child’s development. Therefore, for prevention, be sure to visit a pediatric neurologist at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months .

18 months. The baby easily repeats frequently heard words. Knows different parts of the body and points to them. Masters simple words (by the age of 2 years, their vocabulary can range from 20 to 50). Answers in words or gestures the questions: “Where is the bear?”, “What is this?” He loves when people read to him. At the request of an adult, he points his finger at the pictures in the book. 2 years. First sentences (two words). A two-year-old child can easily combine simple words mastered by the age of 2 into combinations: “Mom, give me,” “I want this,” “Where is the kitty?” Understands simple instructions consisting of two sequential actions: “Find your teddy bear and show it to grandma.” The vocabulary can expand to 150 - 200 lexemes, and others can already understand half of the words the child pronounces. The baby begins to use pronouns, adjectives and prepositions. Holds a book correctly in his hands. “Reads” to his toys.
3 years. Multi-word sentences (three or more words). At 3 years old, the period of early childhood ends. By this turning point, the child is able to compose sentences of three or more words. Distinguishes between colors and size definitions. Remembers and repeats familiar rhythms, melodies, stories. Some difficulties in sound pronunciation may still persist (whistling, hissing, vowel sounds). The vocabulary is expanding so much that parents can no longer accurately count how many words it consists of. In general, the baby is already ready to speak out on any occasion.

Who is faster: boys or girls

Of course, each baby is unique and develops at its own pace. In practice, a slight delay in speech development may turn out to be only an individual feature. Moreover, the rate of speech development can be affected by: illness, stress, lack of communication with surrounding adults, or the multilingual environment in which the baby grows up.

And it can still be very difficult to resist the temptation to compare your child with others. Why do some children at the age of 2 already read passages from “Moidodyr” from memory and speak in whole phrases, while others need another 1.5 - 2 years to be at the same level? Should I be worried about this?

In modern psychology, two types of children with normally developing speech are distinguished: “talkers” and “silent ones.”

“Talkers” show increased activity and interest in the world around them. Such children love to tell stories, ask a lot of questions and easily get accustomed to new surroundings. Sometimes they start talking earlier than other children.
“Silent people” tend to be contemplative. They always need to adapt to new surroundings. They may start speaking late, but almost immediately without defects. It is important for such kids to be heard and understood. Therefore, parents should try to respond carefully to the child’s questions. However, if the “silent child” has not begun to speak by the age of 2–3 years, you need to contact a specialist.

According to statistics, boys begin to develop speech later than girls. One of the reasons lies in physiology. Brain maturation occurs faster in girls. This affects the growth of vocabulary: by the age of 2, girls usually have twice as much vocabulary as boys of the same age. Plus, they are more emotional by nature and happily share all their impressions, while boys tend to show greater verbal restraint, speaking only “to the point.”

In addition, numerous studies have shown that the higher the child’s motor activity, the better speech development. It makes sense that more active kids might begin to demonstrate advanced language skills before their slower peers.

Playing with a child promotes speech development. Encourage him to move more, and the baby will happily pick up the game.

Types of speech

Speech can be active or passive:

Active - the one that the baby uses. The child knows the words he has learned, can confidently pronounce them, and construct sentences with their help.
Passive is the one that the child understands, but for certain reasons does not pronounce. For example, he may know the word “TV”, but not say it because it is difficult for him.

It is very important to develop both active and passive speech of a child.

How to help develop speech by age

Up to a year old, the baby makes his first attempts to speak - he smiles in response to visual and verbal contact with adults, tries to say some sound or even repeat after mom or dad. Therefore, it is very important to focus on these attempts, smile, look at the baby, showing in every possible way that you are interested.

1-3 years. At this age, mothers and fathers, when communicating with a child, try (on an unconscious level) to speak to the baby in his language - briefly, understandably, clearly. Thus, the child understands what is being said to him, what he wants to say. Try to get rid of baby talk and empty repetition (such as “ba-ba”, “peek-a-boo”). The child must hear the words in full so that later he can say them the same way, and not shorten the syllables, rearrange them, distorting the meaning. Correct speech stimulates communication.

From 3 years and older. The most common opinion of most modern parents is that by sending a three-year-old child to kindergarten, the pace of communication can be slowed down, and all the necessary speech skills will be developed by the employees of the child care institution. This is wrong. Parental communication remains just as important, because it is in the family that the foundations of communication are laid, on which the rest of the acquired knowledge will be superimposed.

What to pay attention to

The development schedule for speech skills was given above. Children develop differently, and even the most talented talkers can only master all the necessary skills for their age group once they reach its upper limit. Therefore, the norms of timely development do not always serve as reliable guidelines for understanding whether a particular child is mastering speech correctly. We’ll take a different approach and tell you what should be the reason to contact a specialist:

By the end of the 1st month, the baby does not cry before feeding;
By the end of the 4th month he does not smile when spoken to and does not gurgle;
By the end of the 5th month does not listen to music;
By the 7th month, does not recognize the voices of loved ones, does not respond to intonations;
By the end of the 9th month, there is no babbling and the child cannot repeat sound combinations and syllables after adults, imitating the intonation of the speaker;
By the end of the 10th month, the baby does not wave his head as a sign of denial or his hand as a sign of goodbye;
By the age of 1 year, the child cannot utter a word and does not fulfill the simplest requests (“give”, “show”, “bring”);
By 1 year 4 months, cannot call mom “mom” or dad “dad”;
By 1 year 9 months cannot pronounce 5–6 meaningful words;
By the age of 2, does not show body parts that are named to him; does not comply with two-action requests (“go into the room and take a book”), does not recognize loved ones in photographs;
At 3 years old, cannot retell short poems and fairy tales, cannot say his first and last name; speaks in such a way that others do not understand him; speaks very quickly, swallowing endings, or very slowly, drawing out words.

How to help young children develop speech

What can we, parents, do from the very birth of a child to ensure that he speaks naturally?

Let us remind you that the sensory channel for perceiving information about the external environment (vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch) is the main one for children in the first years of life.

Therefore, the answer lies on the surface: it is necessary to give the child as much information as possible about the world around him, as much as possible of any kind of sensory sensations and stimuli. Let's talk about it.

Touch. Feeling #1 at first.

Mother's warm hands, her gentle touches, stroking, massage, gymnastics, toys of different shapes and textures, finger games - the more of this, the better.

Knowledge about oneself, one’s body and its sensations is formed through contact with the environment, so diversify the child’s tactile sensations as much as possible. Water of different temperatures (carefully!), soft fabric and rubber balls, a plastic rattle and a wooden cube, finger paints on a palette, sand in a children's sandbox, beans in a jar, etc. - the world is so rich for training your sense of touch!

Hearing.

Give your baby as much information as possible that he can perceive by ear:

sounds of music
nature
household appliances in the house
street noise from the window
sounds of native speech, etc.

Always talk to your baby about everything. Mom does this naturally, because speech accompanies any of her actions: she voices swaddling, feeding, bathing, and putting her to bed. She names objects surrounding the child, pointing at them.

When the baby starts to walk, the mother “keeps up the conversation”: she responds to the sounds the baby makes, repeats them and introduces him to adult speech, which the baby will try to imitate as he grows up.

Vision.

We interest the baby in the objects around him so that he learns to focus his vision and maintain his attention on significant objects.

To help your child concentrate, you can hang bright colored objects above the crib (for example, balloons, fluffy pom-poms - they are quite light and will certainly attract attention).

Some mobile models come with removable toys to help adults provide a stimulating and varied space for their child. This is for the little ones.

Later, the arsenal of objects from the surrounding reality can be replenished endlessly, both due to toys in the house, and due to the visual impressions that the baby will receive when he is outside the home: on a city street, on a river, in a forest, in a zoo.

Taste.

Mother's milk, water, teas, juices, pureed and solid food - what a variety of textures and tastes! Introduce your baby to them by gradually expanding the range of products that you introduce into baby food. The sooner a child becomes familiar with basic tastes, the less picky he will be in food later.

Songs, rhymes and nursery rhymes for speech development in children 2 - 3 years old

These are perhaps the most effective, generation-tested ways of communicating with young children.

Basic principles:

simple rhyme
repetition of sounds or words
small size
accompaniment with gestures/actions

Rhyming poems can be told, or they can be sung using various melodies.

The main purpose of nursery rhymes, finger games, rhymes:

emotional contact with the child
development of his speech skills
finger massage
study of body parts
assistance in establishing a routine

For example, by repeating the same rhyme before bedtime, you can develop in your child the expectation of a funny rhyme and the understanding that it is time for him to sleep.

IMPORTANT: Young children need consistency and order as this develops a sense of stability and security.

You can come up with or choose from the many available nursery rhymes, one for different occasions:

morning hygiene procedures

rhyme for washing

changing baby's clothes

rhyme when changing clothes

preparation for swimming

bath rhyme

before gymnastics

rhyme for gymnastics

finger massage

poem for finger massage

before bedtime

bedtime poems

The classic nursery rhymes “okay”, “cockerel-comb”, “horned goat”, “white-sided magpie” and many others will also delight the baby and be useful.

Playing and learning to speak: role-playing games for children

Options for playing with a child are limited only by the parents' imagination. At the same time, the child often independently suggests what he wants to do, distributes roles and organizes the game. Your mission is to fill the game with detailed dialogues so that the game is not only exciting, but also useful for the development of the baby’s speech. It can be:

Hide and seek The classic game of “peek-a-boo” with infants can gradually change. You can hide behind anything, attracting the child with the words “where is mom?”, “find mom.” As the child grows up, he will begin to enjoy hiding on his own, and you, with appropriate verbal accompaniment, will look for him.

Role-playing games At first, these can be very simple games. For example, you can play with a toy phone, a child can call mom, dad, brother, sister, say “Hello,” find out “how are you?” and vice versa. Then you can role-play fairy tales, come up with stories yourself, using household items and toys

“Guess” There are many variations of games. You can ask your child: “guess what I’m doing?” and show some action: combing your hair, pouring tea into cups. Or ask: “guess who I am?” and depict a bunny or a bear cub. You can show soft animals and ask: “guess who it is?”, “what does he like to eat”, “where does he live?” If the child cannot answer, you should give a detailed answer yourself, and after a while repeat the questions to the child

Active games Nursery rhymes and songs can be used in active play with the child, encouraging him to repeat the corresponding actions along with the words. This, in parallel with speech skills, will develop both the child’s physical and musical abilities. Examples:

nursery rhyme with movements 1

nursery rhyme with movements 2

Working on correct pronunciation: exercises, articulation gymnastics in pictures

In order for your child to quickly master the correct pronunciation of words, and you do not have to contact a speech therapist, there is so-called articulation gymnastics. Regular exercises with a child who constantly confuses and mispronounces sounds will lay the foundation for correct and beautiful speech in the future. It is better to train the muscles of the tongue, palate, lips, larynx and cheeks in front of a mirror.

Examples of exercises:

articulation gymnastics 1

articulation gymnastics 2

articulation gymnastics 3

You can dilute the activities by including funny rhymes, movements and grimaces. For example:

rhyme for articulation 1

rhyme for articulation 2

rhyme for articulation 3

What mistakes can parents make when developing their child’s speech?

Often the child is overly patronized and protected, they try to predict his desires - of course, out of love for him. But then the baby does not develop the desire to work independently, he does not learn to express his thoughts through speech, and many processes in his development may be inhibited.

• Intuition and love help loved ones understand a child literally at a glance. But communicating with unfamiliar people in unusual conditions will be difficult for him, and in the worst case, acutely uncomfortable. To prevent this from happening, as you grow older, you need to enter into conversations more often with new and new interlocutors, and then the child will simply be forced to improve his speech understanding skills.

• Some parents underestimate, while others overestimate, the requirements for the baby’s speech. In the first case, they do not demand anything from the child, all his wishes are guessed and immediately fulfilled, in the second, they constantly pester him: “Tell me!”, “Repeat!”. Sometimes in one family two extreme approaches are used at once: for example, dad demands, and grandmother takes care. This has a very adverse effect on the child’s speech development.

• Try to eliminate lisping, “baby talk,” and constant onomatopoeia when communicating with your baby. The parent's speech is a model for the child.

• Parents can speak very quickly or, conversely, too slowly, without pauses and different intonations, monotonously. It is important to use all the richness and diversity of language when developing a child’s speech.

• Do not try to speed up the baby's natural speech development. Avoid overwork from speech classes and memorization of poetry.

Speech readiness for school

If a child is 5-6 years old, a period of active preparation for school begins, that is, a transition from the predominance of play activities to the predominance of educational activities. And the most important sign that the baby is ready to sit at the desk is the correctness and expressiveness of his speech. The rules are:

the child distinguishes all sounds, pronounces them loudly and clearly;
uses various methods of word formation, can form adjectives from nouns;
constructs grammatically correct phrases, compound and complex sentences.

If the child does not cope with the above, then he may face serious problems in comprehending educational material; there is a high risk of developing problems with dyslexia (reading impairment) and dysgraphia (writing impairment), so the importance of speech development should not be underestimated. Having discovered that the baby is in some way inconsistent with his age, you should immediately visit a speech therapist with him and begin making adjustments, including with the help of specially designed complexes.