How to help child talk

Delayed Speech or Language Development (for Parents)

As with other skills and milestones, the age at which kids learn language and start talking can vary. Knowing a bit about speech and language development can help parents figure out if there's cause for concern.

How Do Speech and Language Differ?

• Speech is the verbal expression of language and includes articulation (the way we form sounds and words).
• Language is giving and getting information. It's understanding and being understood through communication — verbal, nonverbal, and written.

What Are Speech or Language Delays?

Speech and language problems differ, but often overlap. For example:

• A child with a language delay might say words well but only be able to put two words together.
• A child with a speech delay might use words and phrases to express ideas but be hard to understand.

What Are the Signs of a Speech or Language Delay?

A baby who doesn't respond to sound or vocalize should be checked by a doctor right away. But often, it's hard for parents to know if their child is taking a bit longer to reach a speech or language milestone, or if there's a problem.

Here are some things to watch for. Call your doctor if your child:

• by 12 months: isn't using gestures, such as pointing or waving bye-bye
• by 18 months: prefers gestures over vocalizations to communicate
• by 18 months: has trouble imitating sounds
• has trouble understanding simple verbal requests
• by 2 years: can only imitate speech or actions and doesn't produce words or phrases spontaneously
• by 2 years: says only some sounds or words repeatedly and can't use oral language to communicate more than their immediate needs
• by 2 years: can't follow simple directions
• by 2 years: has an unusual tone of voice (such as raspy or nasal sounding)

Also call the doctor if your child’s speech is harder to understand than expected for their age:

• Parents and regular caregivers should understand about 50% of a child's speech at 2 years and 75% of it at 3 years.
• By 4 years old, a child should be mostly understood, even by people who don't know the child.

What Causes Speech or Language Delays?

A speech delay might be due to:

• an oral impairment, like problems with the tongue or palate (the roof of the mouth)
• a short frenulum (the fold beneath the tongue), which can limit tongue movement

Many kids with speech delays have oral–motor problems. These happen when there's a problem in the areas of the brain responsible for speech. This makes it hard to coordinate the lips, tongue, and jaw to make speech sounds. These kids also might have other oral-motor problems, such as feeding problems.

Hearing problems also can affect speech. So an audiologist should test a child's hearing whenever there's a speech concern. Kids who have trouble hearing may have trouble saying, understanding, imitating, and using language.

Ear infections, especially chronic infections, can affect hearing. But as long as there is normal hearing in one ear, speech and language will develop normally.

How Are Speech or Language Delays Diagnosed?

If your child might have a problem, it's important to see a speech-language pathologist (SLP) right away. You can find a speech-language pathologist on your own, or ask your health care provider to refer you to one.

The SLP (or speech therapist) will check your child's speech and language skills. The pathologist will do standardized tests and look for milestones in speech and language development.

The SLP also will check:

• what your child understands (called receptive language)
• what your child can say (called expressive language)
• sound development and clarity of speech
• your child's oral–motor status (how the mouth, tongue, palate, etc., work together for speech as well as eating and swallowing)

Based on the test results, the speech-language pathologist might recommend speech therapy for your child.

How Does Speech Therapy Help?

The speech therapist will work with your child to improve speech and language skills, and show you what to do at home to help your child.

How Can Parents Help?

Parents are an important part of helping kids who have a speech or language problem.

Here are a few ways to encourage speech development at home:

• Focus on communication. Talk with your baby, sing, and encourage imitation of sounds and gestures.
• Read to your child. Start reading when your child is a baby. Look for age-appropriate soft or board books or picture books that encourage kids to look while you name the pictures.
• Use everyday situations. To build on your child's speech and language, talk your way through the day. Name foods at the grocery store, explain what you're doing as you cook a meal or clean a room, and point out objects around the house. Keep things simple, but avoid "baby talk. "

Recognizing and treating speech and language delays early on is the best approach. Call your doctor if you have any concerns about your child’s speech or language development.

Reviewed by: Julia K. Hartnett, MS, CCC-SLP

Date reviewed: March 2022

Tips on Learning to Talk

This article gives a brief introduction to language development and includes age-appropriate activities for children birth to 3 years old who are learning to talk.

Learning to talk is a process that starts at birth, when your baby experiences how voices can sound. By 2 years old, most babies have a large vocabulary and can put words together to express their needs and ideas. Let’s see how this process unfolds and what you can do to encourage your baby’s ability to communicate.

Learning to Talk: From Birth to 3 Months

Your baby listens to your voice. He coos and gurgles and tries to make the same sounds you make. You can help your baby learn how nice voices can be when you:

• Sing to your baby. You can do this even before he is born! Your baby will hear you.
• Talk to your baby. Talk to others when she is near. She won’t understand the words, but will like your voice and your smile. She will enjoy hearing and seeing other people, too.
• Plan for quiet time. Babies need time to babble and play quietly without TV or radio or other noises.

From 3 to 6 Months

Your baby is learning how people talk to each other. You help him become a “talker” when you:

• Hold your baby close so he will look in your eyes.
• Talk to him and smile.
• When your baby babbles, imitate the sounds.
• If he tries to make the same sound you do, say the word again.

From 6 to 9 Months

Your baby will play with sounds. Some of these sound like words, such as “baba or “dada.” Baby smiles on hearing a happy voice, and cries or looks unhappy on hearing an angry voice. You can help your baby understand words (even if she can’t say them yet) when you:

• Play games like Peek-a-Boo or Pat-a-Cake. Help her move her hands along with the rhyme.
• Give her a toy and say something about it, like “Feel how fuzzy Teddy Bear is.”
• Let her see herself in a mirror and ask, “Who’s that?” If she doesn’t respond, say her name.
• Ask your baby questions, like “Where’s doggie?” If she doesn’t answer, show her where.

From 9 to 12 Months

Your baby will begin to understand simple words. She stops to look at you if you say “no-no.” If someone asks “Where’s Mommy?” she will look for you. She will point, make sounds, and use her body to “tell” you what she wants. For example she may look up at you and lift her arms up to show you she “wants up.” She may hand you a toy to let you know she wants to play. You can help your baby “talk” when you: Show her how to wave “bye-bye.”

From 12 to 15 Months

Babies begin to use words. This includes using the same sounds consistently to identify an object, such as “baba” for bottle or “juju” for juice. Many babies have one or two words and understand 25 or more. He will give you a toy if you ask for it. Even without words, he can ask you for something—by pointing, reaching for it, or looking at it and babbling. You can help your child say the words he knows when you:

• Talk about the things you use, like “cup,” “juice,” “doll.” Give your child time to name them.
• Ask your child questions about the pictures in books. Give your child time to name things in the picture.
• Smile or clap your hands when your child names the things that he sees. Say something about it. “You see the doggie. He’s sooo big! Look at his tail wag.”
• Talk about what your child wants most to talk about. Give him time to tell you all about it.
• Ask about things you do each day—“Which shirt will you pick today?” “Do you want milk or juice?”
• Build on what your child says. If he says “ball,” you can say, “That’s your big, red ball.”
• Introduce pretend play with your child’s favorite doll or toy animal. Include it in your conversations and your play. “Rover wants to play too. Can he roll the ball with us?”

From 15 to 18 Months

Your child will use more complex gestures to communicate with you and will continue to build her vocabulary. She may take your hand, walk you to the bookshelf, point to a book and say “buk” to say, “I want to read a book with you.” You can help your child talk with you when you:

• Tell her “Show me your nose.” Then point to your nose. She will soon point to her nose. Do this with toes, fingers, ears, eyes, knees and so on.
• Hide a toy while she is watching. Help her find it and share in her delight.
• When he points at or gives you something, talk about the object with her. “You gave me the book. Thank you! Look at the picture of the baby rolling the ball.”

From 18 Months to 2 Years

Your baby will be able to follow directions and begin to put words together, such as “car go” or “want juice.” He will also begin to do pretend play which fosters language development. You can spur your child’s communication skills when you:

• Ask your child to help you. For example, ask him to put his cup on the table or to bring you his shoe.
• Teach your child simple songs and nursery rhymes. Read to your child. Ask him to point to and tell you what he sees.
• Encourage your child to talk to friends and family. He can tell them about a new toy.
• Engage your child in pretend play. You can talk on a play phone, feed the dolls, or have a party with the toy animals.

From 2 to 3 Years

Your child’s language skills will grow by leaps and bounds. He will string more words together to create simple sentences, such as “Mommy go bye-bye.” He will be able to answer simple questions, such as “Where is your bear?” By 36 months he will be able to answer more complicated questions such as, “What do you do when you are hungry?” He will do more and more pretend play, acting out imaginary scenes such as going to work, fixing the toy car, taking care of his “family” (of dolls, animals).

You can help your child put all his new words together and teach him things that are important to know when you:

• Teach your child to say his or first and last name.
• Ask about the number, size, and shape of the things your child shows you.
• Ask open-ended questions that don’t have a “yes” or “no” answer. This helps them develop their own ideas and learn to express them. If it’s worms, you could say: “What fat, wiggly worms! How many are there?…Where are they going? Wait, watch and listen to the answer. You can suggest an answer if needed: “I see five. Are they going to the park or the store?”
• Ask your child to tell you the story that goes with a favorite book. “What happened to those three pigs?” Reading spurs language development. Take him to storytime at your local library. Your toddler will enjoy sharing books with you as well as peers.
• Do lots of pretend play. Acting out stories and role-playing create rich opportunities for using, and learning, language.
• Don’t forget what worked earlier. For example, your child still needs quiet time. This is not just for naps. Turn off the TV and radio and let your child enjoy quiet play, singing, and talking with you.

(Note: This information was adapted, with permission, from Learning Link: Helping Your Baby Learn to Talk, by C.E. Morrisset Huebner and P. Lines, 1994, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement.)

How to help a child to speak and whether it is necessary to do it at all

“When will my child speak? I (or anyone) at this age already played poems, songs, and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in roles! You look at other children, at yourself in your memories, you see instagrams, where cute curly kids give out day after day what Chukovsky could not even dream of. And you are getting more and more nervous every minute: when already, when, what is wrong with him? Did you recognize yourself? Sit back, we've been through this too. nine0003

Of course, it would be a good idea to show the child to a good neurologist or speech therapist. But we are all afraid of the terrible verdict "delayed speech development", as we are afraid of any childhood illness or deviation. Because we don't know what to do with it. The most perfect mechanism suddenly fails - panic!

Calmness, only calmness

First, you need to force yourself not to panic and, in general, worry less about this topic. Yes, it's very, very difficult. Yes, I want to quickly hear how your baby is chatting. Yes, I want to talk to him in your language, I want to share it with family and friends. Yes, all this is even more frustrating, but the simple truth is that the mother's worries and obsession with speech are unlikely to help the child speak. On the contrary, in extreme cases, the effect can be the opposite: on the basis of their own disorders, the mother can get carried away with “developers” and not notice how the games turn into pressure on the child, thus slowing down the development of speech. nine0003

In itself, speech delay is not terrible - each child develops according to his own schedule

Even the standards adopted by doctors have an error of three to six months (this is only for one child, but the standards themselves often differ from each other). Why not longer, is this time fixed? As well-known neuroscientists Sandra Amondt and Sam Wong write in their book Secrets of Your Child's Brain, the fact is that in young children, neural connections in the brain responsible for certain functions develop rapidly. Therefore, this period of time - a quarter or a half of a year at the age of three years - is actually a huge period. And for sure the structure has already been built, but has not yet manifested itself. Or just the opposite - there are some violations, and they need to be caught right now, before it's too late. nine0003

Therefore, watch. Observe the child's behavior, for its changes. By the way, this is a great way to drown out feelings - write down daily events and entertainment in a notebook. Something like a diary. Observations will help to see the dynamics or lack thereof. You may be surprised to see that two Mondays ago "where" was just a sound, and today there are already two "where" - for people and for hidden objects, and they are completely different phonetically. By the way, this is already a speech. nine0003

How to recognize speech disorders in a child in time

In addition, it will finally become clear how much a child learns, and that even in one day there is a series of small breakthroughs and leaps. This applies not only to words, but also to actions, the degree of understanding and memorization, emotions and their expression, and even “minor household duties” that you didn’t plan to teach your child, but one morning, while you are making him porridge, he takes and makes you coffee.

The bottom line is that a lag in speech always goes hand in hand with lags in motor - and in particular - in fine motor development

“The age at which a baby begins to speak is determined by the maturation of those parts of the brain that control movement. Producing meaningful and intelligible sounds requires fairly complex motor skills and considerable practice,” explain Amondt and Wong. Therefore, if there are problems in speech, then they certainly exist in some other segment of development, and they are just as striking as the inability (here we are talking about the inability, not the unwillingness) to express one's thoughts in words. nine0003

Let talking koloboks stay in stores

Multifunctional miracle toys, robots that teach you to speak, cards with single-root words - all this, to put it mildly, has nothing to do with the development of speech. But this does not mean that the child does not need or there is nothing to help "spread the word". The Soviet physiologist Marionilla Koltsova explained 40 years ago why the development of speech is excellently facilitated by finger games known to everyone since childhood. “The movements of the fingers historically, in the course of the development of mankind, turned out to be closely related to the speech function. The first form of communication of primitive people was gestures, gradually they began to be combined with exclamations and cries. Thousands of years passed before verbal speech developed, but for a long time it was associated with gestural speech. The movements of the fingers were gradually improved - from generation to generation, people performed more and more subtle and complex work. In this regard, there was an increase in the area of ​​the motor projection of the hand in the human brain. So the development of the functions of the hand and speech in people went in parallel. Approximately the same is the course of development of the speech of the child. nine0003

First, finger movements begin to develop, and when they reach sufficient subtlety, the development of verbal speech begins. And there he also gives several possible options for playing with fingers.

They also include tying and untying shoelaces, sorting through cereals and “finger theater” - animals and fairy-tale characters that are put on fingers. nine0003

Don't be silent

It is a well-known fact that children (especially not yet speaking children) reflect and relay parental behavior in almost all aspects of their lives - from mood and behavior to the manner of sitting at the table. Speech is no exception. Therefore, motor skills are motor skills, but first of all, look at yourself: do you yourself talk enough with the child? If you only give commands - let's go for a walk, eat, put away toys - this will not work. The advice is simple and obvious.

Try to talk to your child about everything. If he does not answer you in your language, this does not mean that he does not answer you at all or does not understand you

Tell him about what you are doing right now, about what you will do on a walk, discuss how day passed. Speak the words that he drew attention to, beat them. Show him how to pronounce the difficult word. All this is not just sentimental trifles and not only about establishing contact and connection - this is also about speech. At some point, he will want to repeat one word after you, then another, a third, and then another, and another, and another, and you will no longer be able to stop him. nine0003

In his language

The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky called the transition from a languageless to a linguistic period of development a period of autonomous speech (“Issues of Child Psychology”). This is a language created by the child himself on the basis of an adult language, but not repeating it and living according to its own laws. At the same time, the child perfectly understands adult speech, that is, the language spoken by the society around him. But the meanings of his words do not coincide with the meaning of our words. It is generally difficult to call these lexemes words in the usual sense - they are more like fragments of words, often denoting entire categories (for example, the word "tank", meaning "dog" in a child's speech, can simultaneously be a wolf, a fox, that is, all animals that look like to a dog, or it can “spread” to a squirrel, because it is as red as a fox, to the owner of a particular dog, and so on). nine0003

It is important to understand that such speech is a necessary and important period during which the child learns the language as a tool and system, and to help him as much as possible in this

Linguist Stella Zeitlin draws attention to the fact that at this stage parents should not neglect the so-called babysitter language. All kinds of "b-b-machine" and "bow-wow dog" have the most important function: the child understands that he is understood. At the same time, there is no reliable information about the cause-and-effect relationships between the speech that parents used in communicating with their young children during this period and the time the child's speech appeared. But there is reliable evidence that those children with whom they talked more spoke themselves earlier and had a larger vocabulary. nine0003

Generation problem

If you're still worried about your friend's daughter talking before your son, and you've been playing roles for a year, then here's another fact for you: you're not alone. In the last 10-15 years, pediatricians, psychologists and linguists have noted a trend towards a later appearance of speech in children - after two years. While this situation has not been studied enough to accurately name the reasons for the widespread "delay", but some experts make assumptions. The point, in their opinion, may be that parents, trying to keep up with their friends, colleagues and the world of social networks, began to communicate less with children. nine0003

Why it is not necessary to try to put as much knowledge into the child as possible at an early age

The second reason is called, on the contrary, endless motherly chatter. “The child does not even need to say anything, he is already understood and all his desires are foreseen,” they say and quote an anecdote about that boy who was fine with everything until the age of five.

It is in order to preserve the golden mean that speech therapists advise not to insist and not to speak everything for the child, but to encourage him to speak

Do not ask for a specific word directly, but ask a leading question. For example, instead of “say the ball,” ask the child “what did you play with dad today for a walk? what do I have in my hands?" or just "what is it?" Instead of "tell Masha" - "what is the name of your little sister?". Even if the answers do not follow, the child, one way or another, will think about them and answer you internally. And if he answers in his own language - do not get annoyed and do not despair, it is better to praise and pronounce it in your own way.

Do not be afraid of doctors

All of the above does not mean at all that you need to avoid doctors and force your child to pick beans all day long. In fact, the most important commandment of a modern mother is if you feel that something is wrong and you don’t know what, contact a specialist. But mom's feelings are understandable here. There are many specialists, they all sing in a different way, one neurologist requires 15 words from a one-year-old child, and the second does not consider silence even at two years old to be a critical story. And in general, they are all strangers, it’s easier to ask a friend or get into the Internet, although they scare there, but somehow more detached. nine0003

Neurologists, of course, do not aim to scare parents. They seek to identify developmental disorders (if any) at an early stage

Attention. If the doctor (neurologist, psychologist, speech therapist) considered that this is still your diagnosis, then do not hesitate to ask him why he made such an assumption - only by the number of words or are there any other signs of a lag, and is there an acute the need for stimulation. And then be sure to tell the child about your future plans, he will definitely answer you. nine0003

As a bonus, we have collected advice from neurologists, speech therapists and psychologists on what not to do if you think that the child's speech is late:

• Don't make your child watch cartoons. No matter how "developing" and thoughtful they may be, they have a completely different purpose. For a small child, cartoons are first of all an image and only then dialogues and morals. And he has a lot of images and stories around him.
• Do not distort your speech. nine0018 "The car goes" b-b "" and "bibika vzhik-vzhik" are two completely different sentences. In the first one, it is clear that the car is driving and making this sound, but the "beep" is completely unnecessary. If the child comes up with this word himself, leave it to him. But you are a standard for him, you speak qualitatively.
• Do not bribe. "Say "mom" - I'll give you a candy" - don't do it like that. Speech is not needed to get sweets, and sweets are not given out for fulfilling conditions.
• Do not blackmail. nine0018 The same, but in reverse. Do not deprive your child of gingerbread because he does not speak.
• Do not insist or force. He can completely shut himself up in protest.
• Don't get hung up.