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When the parents or guardians, in their opinion, notice the abnormal development of speech in the child, they should visit a speech therapist together with the child. The abnormalities can range from not making enough speech progress to mispronouncing sounds. A visit to a speech therapist will either make parents aware that everything is fine, or make it possible to immediately start correcting speech or bite defects that cause irregularities in the construction of sounds.
Causes of speech impediments
There are many reasons why a speech impediment may appear in a child. Most often, the cause is an incorrect bite or impaired hearing. However, sometimes the problems are much more serious, ranging from insufficient speech control or more or less serious anatomical abnormalities.
Genetic predisposition is sometimes the basis for speech impediments, but this is relatively rare. One of the most amazing causes of incorrect pronunciation is the persistent imitation of someone in the immediate vicinity of a child who has an abnormality. It happens that such imitation is discovered only by a speech therapist.
Speech therapy exercises – visit to a speech therapist
There are times when it is helpful to consider whether your child really needs help speech therapist. Remember that not all babies start pronouncing a beautiful “r” at the same time. It is not a cause for concern if the XNUMX-year-old does not clearly pronounce the sound “j”. However, if a five-year-old child has difficulty pronouncing sounds such as “sh”, “cz” or “ż”, it is definitely worth visiting a specialist.
Another speech defect that the child is unlikely to outgrow is lisp. This defect is due to the incorrect pronunciation of the sounds «s», «c», «z» and «dz». When speaking, children most often stick their tongue between the teeth, and this may be due to weakening of the muscles of the tongue itself or a too short frenulum of the tongue. In both cases, appropriate sets of exercises are able to eliminate this defect. Sometimes lisp is caused by a bad bite, but then speech therapist will refer the toddler to an orthodontist.
Another disadvantage is that the sounds are changed while speaking. And so it happens that “d” is replaced by the letter “t”, and in place of “b” “p” appears. A three-year-old child can make such mistakes, but a five-year-old speech therapist he must now choose the appropriate exercises to correct the problem.
Speech therapy exercises – examples
Speech therapy exercises for 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds and older children can be divided into exercises respiratory, phonational and articulation.
If speech therapist will recommend breathing exercises, you can play with your baby in a variety of ways. The baby can draw a lot of air through the nose and then blast it sharply through the mouth so that a piece of paper ripples or a light Styrofoam ball moves.
A great exercise that kids love is blowing soap bubbles, and the bigger the bubble, the more air it blows out. Toddlers have a great time and exercise unconsciously by taking part in a paper ship competition. You need to pour water into the bowl, place paper ships on the surface and, by blowing, move them in certain directions. You can also give your toddler a paper pinwheel, which makes it move by blowing.
Phonation exercises are designed to teach your child to use the correct pitch. Playing in imitating the voices of animals is invaluable here. Reciting children’s poems with sounds of animals is also great. The toddlers, however, like to imitate the sounds of someone else’s laughter the most.
Articulation exercises are aimed at increasing the physical capabilities of the speech apparatus, so exercises such as puffing the cheeks together or alternately, kissing or kissing will be most appropriate. You can purse your lips, “pull” your cheeks inside or lick the lollipop from the bottom up.
The appropriate set of exercises is best selected speech therapistand at home you need to find time for systematic exercise. It is usually a long process, but with solid exercise, you get very good effects.