The child does not speak at the age of 2: reasons and treatment

A two years old child does not speak: reasons, symptoms; is it worth visiting a neurologist? Normally, upon reaching this age, the kid should actively communicate with parents and relatives, otherwise this may be a sign of psycho-speech development delay.

From the first days of the child’s life, the most important component of the human life starts to form – SPEECH. The ability to talk and understand other people’s speech is inseparately associated with such processes as memory, attention and thinking. A person can fully exist and harmoniously join the other people community only by means of speech. Therefore, it is extremely important for parents to know the basic norms of speech development and symptoms signalling some deviations in children – in order to start the treatment in time and to prevent serious health problems in future.

Norms of speech development

Let’s examine the basic norms of speech development in children. Many parents believe that before their child utters the first words (often at the age of about a year), it is useless to talk to him/her, because baby does not understand and learn anything yet. But this is an extremely erroneous opinion, because speech development begins from the very first days of baby’s life.

The first stage of this process is cry. While the child was in his mother’s bump, all his needs were instantly met. But, getting to a completely different environment, baby needs to find a way of self-declaring somehow and give a signal that his/her needs are not met (wet, hungry or sleepy, sad, etc.). That means the cry becomes a signal of discomfort at an unconditioned reflex level.

The second stage is babbling. It usually occurs at the age of one to two months and accompanies the child in the first six months of life. These are different variations of sounds: a-goo, gee-s, gee-e, a-ge, poo-poo, etc. With the advent of a meaningful adult, the child’s walking becomes much more active, he looks into your eyes, waits for your answer and is already trying to build a full-fledged speech dialogue. It is very important to maintain this “dialogue”, talk to the child as much as possible.

The prattling is the third stage of speech development. The child begins to prattle at the age of 6-7 months. The baby begins to pronounce the individual syllables “ba”, “ma”, “ta”, etc. – momentary at once, very rarely and as if by accident. Gradually, syllables are heard more and more often, they are repeated in the form of chains: ba-ba-ba-ba, ma-ma-ma-ma.

The stage of the first words starts at 11-12 months of the child’s life. Child begins to associate words with environmental objects; words are filled with meaning. By this time the child has already formed an active (from 3 to 10 spoken words) and a passive (up to 20 words) vocabulary. By the age of 1.5 years, the vocabulary increases to 40-70 words, and at the age of 2 a child already uses from 150 to 300 words. The child begins to speak with sentences. First they consist of two words (mama give, dolly boom, etc.), and then – from three to four words.

You should understand that each child develops individually, and if there are short-term speech development delays, this is not a deviation sign. But, if delays are quite long or some stages of development are completely absent – this is an important reason to consult a specialist.

Why 2 years old child cannot talk?

Normally, after 2, the baby should actively communicate with parents and relatives, call things by their proper names and tell different stories. But it happens that the child does not say a word or does it very bad at the age of two. The reasons for this are following:

1. No need for speech. This can happen in two opposite situations. First, when parents almost do not talk to a child; he/she spends a lot of time in front of TV or computer – there’s simply no one to communicate with. Second, when parents are trying to say everything for the child and do not give the child an opportunity to talk; they try to foresee his desires from gestures and sounds, to formulate simple questions that can be answered with “yes/no” – the kid simply does not need to enter the communication.
2. Hereditary diseases, which are accompanied by speech delay.
3. The nature of parents’ speech and environment. If the adult speech around the child is fluent, fast, fuzzy, then the children are not able to repeat it.
4. Difficult delivery (rapid labor, with cord entanglement) or birth trauma (cervical spine and/or central nervous system) can also lead speech delay.
5. Severe infections and trauma (psycho-emotional traumas as well) suffered by a child at an early age, which negatively influenced the general development of the child’s speech. Also, it is important to understand that speech delay can be an accompanying symptom of more serious diseases, such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy or CNS congenital anomalies.

Psycho-speech delay

Psycho-speech delay is a consequence of central nervous system and brain deviations, which manifest themselves in the form of child’s mental development violations (memory, attention, speech, thinking, and emotional-volitional sphere).

Psycho-speech development is often diagnosed at the age of 2-3, although the first signs can be noted even from 4 months. But the later the diagnosis of psycho-speech delay is set, the more difficult to get rid of it in future.

There are very important signs of psycho-speech delay, which parents can detect on their own. Children have excessive salivation, often a slightly open mouth, they are low-emotional or, on the contrary, hyperactive and aggressive, poorly developed physically. The key symptoms, which point to psycho-speech delay, are:

• a child does not respond to your words and gestures at the age of 4 months, does not smile;
• a child does not babble at the age of 8-9 months;
• at the age of 1 year he/she practically does not pronounce any sounds, and by the age of 1.5 does not speak any simple words like “mother”, “give”, does not understand the speech addressed to him;
• at the age of 2 years he/she does not repeat any new words, uses very few words in speech;
• at the age of 5 years he/she uses about 20 words, does not understand the names of body parts and other objects; cannot form an easy phrase of 2-3 words;
• at the age of 3 years he/she can not repeat after an adult any phrase or make an easy sentence, speaks too slowly, stretching words, or, on the contrary, quickly, “swallowing” their endings.

If you notice similar symptoms in your child, then contact your child’s neurologist as soon as possible to establish a specific diagnosis. The younger the child is – the more chances for a successful comprehensive recovery and the proper development of the child in future are.

Treatment and correction of speech delay

In “Bersenev’s Medical Centre” our specialists conduct a complex treatment of psycho-speech delay. The doctors of our clinic make an individual treatment program for each child. This program includes a complex of rehabilitation measures that are carried out by a child’s neurologist, massage and speech therapists. Psychologist, reflexologist and parents are also involved in the treatment process.

One of the main parents’ tasks is to eliminate the causes of psycho-speech delay (this applies to families with an unfavourable climate). Very important treatment moments are attentiveness to the child, moral support and patience, because psycho-speech development correction is a complex and painstaking process.

In case of timely speech delay detection, fulfilling of all recommendations and good attitude you can be guaranteed to expect good results, high treatment efficiency and the fact that speech delay will not affect your child in future.