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CAUSES AND SYPTOMS OF DELAYED SPEECH

It might happen that you may not find your child, at twelve months to two years of age, at the same level as their peers in verbal communication skills. You think it is just a developmental problem they are facing and put off seeking professional advice; an intrinsically wrong step to take, because your child might be sufferingfrom speech delay.

Delayed speech, alalia, can be roughly categorized into age related groups, generally beginning at the age of 12 months, and continuing through the early adolescence, and they are:

  1. Age-12 months
  1. It is indeed a symptom if your child cannot point at objects or cannot manage gestures, such as waving goodbye.
  2. Another symptom is that if your child does not prefer to communicate verbally as much as his/her peers.
  1. Age- 15-18 months
  1. If your child is unable to pronounce familiar syllables or simply cannot call you even by this time, its worrying symptom.
  2. You find your child unable to, or simply not reciprocating to “no, hello, hi, bye”.
  3. If your child unable to extend his/her vocabulary up to 15 words by fifteen months, then it’s a symptom.
  1. Age-2 – 4 years
  1. You find your child unable to spontaneously produce speech and words.
  2. Another worrying symptom is your child is lacking consonant sounds at the beginning and end of words while speaking.
  3. If you still find your child unable to form simple sentences and words, then it is indeed a troubling symptom, confirming the disorder.

THE CAUSES OF SPEECH DISODERS ARE:

 

  1. A primary cause can be physical disruption in parts of the oral cavity such as lip or palate, which may be deformed.

 

  1. Another serious cause can be dysfunction which is disruption in creation of the specific area of the brain which deals with speech and communication.

 

  1. The disorder can also be attributed to impairment in the development in the child’s intellectual, receptive, and expressive abilities.

 

  1. There can also be psychological causes involving school environment and peer relationship which might lead to disruption of speech patterns and reluctance in speech expression and development.

 E-HEAR AND SPEECH REHAB, the leading speech therapy center in Kolkata, provides speech therapy with most advanced techniques.