Every child has own pace of growth, and he or she touches such developmental milestones accordingly. Some children achieve early growth while others may delay it. This range is quite wide. However, taking a long time to speak is one of the most common delays in children.
Speech is nothing more than a verbal form of expression. When your child tries to take your name for the first time, it is the stage where he/she tries to communicate verbally. Here are the possible symptoms, causes and effect relationship, and treatment for the delay in speech developmental milestones of a child.
Signs And Symptoms
Speech or language problems are not so serious in most of the cases. But there are some warning signs that one should not ignore. No matter it’s speaking or hearing or walking, if there is a loss of already learned skills, it is not a good symptom.
In starting few months, say 3 to 4 months, if your child doesn’t respond to loud noise or not able to babble, you should consider it a serious sign and take your child to the specialist doctor. At this stage, usually, children try to imitate sounds.
Other than this, your child should understand a few common like mama, baba, nana, and etc. words or try to recite them by the age of one year. Till the end of the second year, he should be able to speak at least 15 words or two-word phrases.
Causes Of Delayed Speech Developmental Milestones
There may various reasons for delayed speech. Sometimes they may be unpredictable too. One of the prominent causes of delay in speech is a lack of understanding. Your child may lack understanding whatever you are speaking, the language you use or the way you speak. If your child is exposed to more than one language or multiple languages, it may be hard for him/her to understand varieties at initial stages.
The second most common cause is having a problem in muscle controlling while trying to speak. If not taken care, this easy issue may turn into a disorder called dysarthria. Other causes may be a problem in listening, hearing loss, child abuse or negligence.
Treatment
If you suspect a speech delay, first you should comfort your child to speak. You should do all the things that may help your children to speak. For it, talk to your children more, spend time, encourage repetition, teach how to talk, and reinforce speech and language throughout the day. This process will help your child to understand language and way of speaking. Otherwise, send your child to speech therapies for easy and better speak.
If these steps don’t help you, you should visit a doctor and seek other remedies. There may be some other problems or speech disorder.
Final words
There is timely progress necessary for healthy development. If such progress doesn’t take place timely, you should consider other ways to make your child speak. However, being a common problem, there is nothing to worry about even if he/she speaks late.