Speech Delay In Children

Typically, a 2-year-old baby should be able to speak 50 words and two to three-word sentences. And by the age of 3, the vocabulary increases to 1000 words and they are good to speak three to four sentences.

If you see that your toddler is not meeting this milestone, he may have a speech delay.

Speech Delay in Children

Children develop their language skills in the first few days of their lives. However, the pace at which every child achieves its milestone differs from one child to the next. Some children start early while others start pretty late. Identifying speech delay in children is quite a tricky thing because in general it is considered a small roadblock that will go off ‘naturally’. But in actuality, this is not true.

Here are some important facts about speech delay in children and how can you as a parent help your child to overcome this delay.

The speech delay refers to a condition where a child is unable to any sound in a language or utters any meaningful word that is appropriate at his age. 

Causes of Speech Delay In Children

There are many causes of delay in speech amongst children.

• Learning disabilities
• Autism
• Hearing Impairment
• Chronic Ear Infection
• Tongue-tie
• Oral Motor Issues
• Family History

Can Speech Therapy Help a Child?

Speech therapy certainly helps children with speech delays to a great extent. However, if a child is having any medical issues leading to speech delay, speech therapy cannot help much.

However, being a parent, you can help if he/she struggling with speech developmental issues.

• Keep talking to your child. It will help your child to understand how he/she can express himself/herself.
• Make a two-way communication with your child. Allow him to share his thoughts and opinions with you on a certain topic.
• Read out the book daily. This helps your child to understand the topic of discussion.
• Include storytelling sessions. Let your child weave out the story in his mind and ask him to narrate this. This will boost up his confidence too.
• Recite the rhymes together and ask your child to enact you.
• Songs are really helpful in developing language skills. Let your child sing a song regularly.
• When traveling with your child, show him the objects which you can see outside. Tell him what are they, why they are used, etc.
• If your child is a bit older, play word games with him. Let him guess the word from the given clue. This will further stimulate your child’s thinking capabilities.

Speech delay is one of the common delays in children’s milestones. Early intervention and therapies help to overcome, rather than simply ignoring it.

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