 |
||
|
YOU ARE CONFUSED, YOUR CHILD DOES NOT PRONOUNCE MOST OF THE SOUNDS ACCURATELY. IS THAT NORMAL? WHEN WILL THEY DEVELOP AND WHAT IS TO BE DONE? These are some of many questions that parents ask themselves. |
||
| Some of them are in panic, thinking their child will never correct his pronunciation, so that they hastily go to the speech therapist’s. Others turn a blind-eye to their child’s poor phoneme articulation and rely on time which will make everything better, governed by the same old sayings: “I don’t want to educate my child, he is still too young, there’s enough time for that, I didn’t speak properly at his age either”. Quite frequently, parents decide when it is the right time for it, or they play speech therapists at home trying to initiate on their own to their mind the most important sound of all – r, not knowing how many preparations are needed for that particular sound and how many thorough procedures as well so as to bring it forth. Some even succeed, but the majority makes greater articulatory disturbances or strong negativism toward any further speech therapist’s active work. It goes without saying that there can be no success without the parents’ active participation during the speech therapist’s treatment. Therefore, if you have any doubt concerning articulatory, cognitive, intellectual, mobile, or social-emotional child’s development, bring your child to the speech therapist’s examination. Thus, you manage to eliminate your doubts, get instructions for your further actions to be performed at our institution as well as at your home. | ||
| The baby talk, i.e. dyslallic speech, includes the physiological developmental period of sound formation. All speech articulation disorders i.e. sounds pronunciation disorders are called dyslalliae. Until the age of 3, children usually acquire the vowels and can pronounce 10-15 consonants. From the articulatory point of view, the developmental process of sound fixation ends well before the age of 2 for the following sounds: "p,b,m,n,j,t,d,k,g,v", whereas the process is still running for the sounds: "c,s,z,c,d,f,l" at that age. The process begins in the middle and toward the end of the age 3 for: "r,nj,c,dž,š,ž", while "lj" is fixed last at the age of 6-7. | ||
| Up to the age of 7, children should acquire the proper speech sounds articulation. All the incorrectly pronounced sounds or those that were missing up to this age stay suchlike for good. That is why it is necessary to consult your speech therapist when the child is at the age of 4,5 or 5 so as to eliminate all the articulatory disorders on time or to bring forth the still non-existent sounds.
And remember: our ears and yours do not always hear identical things! |
||
|
RUŽICA TODOROVIC Speech therapist |
||
|
Translated into English by:
Milan Jovanovic |
||
  |
||