How to teach a child to speak: tips and tricks

A newborn baby communicates with his parents in the only way possible for him - through crying. This is how he communicates that he wants to eat, is cold, is in pain, or just wants attention. However, even mothers do not always understand what causes the screams and tears. The sooner a child learns to speak, the faster he will make life easier for himself and his parents. Talking babies are much calmer, they are less capricious and are able to explain in words what they want. Mom and dad, in turn, will be able to satisfy their needs faster.

Language is one of the most important skills children should master by age two. How to teach a child to speak, when to start classes, what number of spoken words is considered normal at different ages - you will find answers to all these questions in our article.

When children start talking

Each child is an individual, and his development may lag behind or ahead of generally accepted norms. Some children can talk as early as one year, while others stubbornly hide their thoughts from strangers until they are 3 years old. According to psychologists, a child, depending on age, should be able to do the following:

• At 2 months. This is the period of "humbling". The baby happily extends the vowel sounds “a”, “o”, “u”, and some individuals try to add the consonant “g” to them. The baby can repeat this cute “gu-agu” for several minutes, while actively gesturing and smiling.
• From 3 to 6 months. The apparent development of speech at this age is limited to simple syllables or slurred babbling, but pay attention to how the baby listens carefully to your speech. He literally soaks up every word. If you fall silent, the baby fills the pause with his humming, making it clear that the dialogue is not finished and he is waiting for continuation. During this period, it is very important to read him fairy tales, poems, talk more, commenting on everything that is happening around him.
• At 8-10 months. The child continues to babble, but among the incoherent sounds, quite understandable first two-syllable words slip through. The baby begins to understand phrases addressed to him. When naming objects, he looks for them with his eyes and points with his finger. When asked to eat, he opens his mouth, and the message about the upcoming walk evokes a storm of positive emotions.
• At 1 year. The one-year-old baby is already talking. So far his vocabulary is limited to 10-15 words, but he pronounces them quite consciously. Literally after a month or two, the amount doubles, and at 1.5 years the baby is fluent in 30-40 concepts. The vocabulary of two-year-old children is about 100 units. Often at one year old, a child begins to speak his first phrases.
• From 2 to 3 years. This is a period of rapid development of speech. About a thousand words and two hundred phrases - this norm is considered average for this age. Kids use pronouns, inflect words according to case, and speak in completely coherent sentences.

Modern parents are seriously puzzled by the early development of children. In order for a child to start speaking at one year old, appropriate measures must be taken even before he is born. Science has long proven that while in the womb, the baby hears sounds well and understands intonations. Therefore, future parents are recommended to read fairy tales aloud, talk tenderly to the baby, and turn on classical music. This will contribute to the development of the hearing and speech apparatus of the unborn child. For those parents who understand that speech is a skill that children should acquire as early as possible, we suggest using some recommendations.

Your father is a bad man

An offended woman can characterize the child’s father with the most unpleasant epithets: “Your father is a bad person, he abandoned us, he doesn’t need you.” You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that you shouldn’t say that about your father. Perhaps a single mother feels resentment, irritation, even hatred towards the baby’s biological father. But you can’t overload your negative emotions onto small shoulders.

Children at a very young age begin to understand that they have something from their mother and something from their father. Especially if neighbors or relatives constantly say how much the baby looks like his dad. One can imagine how terrible a little person feels, in whose mind a terrible thought is born: “I am a continuation of that vile, vile man who is called my father.” The mother must do everything possible to hide her negative attitude towards the baby's father. You cannot allow yourself to make offensive statements about a dad whom your son or daughter has never even seen.

How to teach a child to speak early

To avoid the question “how to teach a child to speak at two years old,” you need to try not to waste time and not hope that everything will happen by itself. The following will help speed up speech development:

• Conversations with the baby, starting from the first birthday. This expands his passive vocabulary.
• Using the technique of changing intonation. Raising or lowering the voice, bright emotional speech will allow the child to learn to understand his parents earlier.
• Constructing short phrases. Excessive talkativeness can confuse the baby, make him tense and nervous.
• Clear articulation. This will help the child not only hear sounds, but also understand how they are pronounced correctly.
• Daily massage of palms and fingers. In the cerebral cortex, the speech center and the area responsible for fine motor skills are closely connected. By stroking and rubbing the hands, you simultaneously stimulate the development of speech.

Remember, the more varied the communication, the faster the child will gain the necessary passive reserve. According to psychologists, the time when children begin to speak and the purity of speech largely depend on its volume. There are cases when little talkers, even at one year old, quickly chatter in a “childish” language, which is very difficult to understand. Therefore, it is worth paying special attention to the correct and clear pronunciation of sounds and words.

Let's sum it up

It is not easy for a child to accept that his parents become strangers. It is important not to aggravate the situation and avoid the following mistakes:

• do not give false hopes for family reunification;
• do not denigrate your partner;
• do not impose unbearable responsibility on the child;
• do not force adult issues to be resolved;
• do not blame him for the current situation;
• give the right to choose, do not force you to meet a new partner;
• do not prohibit communication with a parent living separately.

Team Growth Phase, Growth Phase

How to teach a child to speak correctly: a simple technique

In order for the baby to speak clearly and correctly, speech therapists advise:

• Give up the pacifier. It has long been proven that children who are overly interested in this subject begin to speak later than their peers. In addition, they may develop an abnormal bite, which greatly affects the clarity of pronounced sounds.
• Perform a facial massage. To do this, you do not need to contact specialists; you can completely do it yourself. Lightly stroking the forehead, nose, maxillary sinuses, and the area around the lips helps activate the muscles involved in the pronunciation of sounds.
• Do articulatory gymnastics. It must be carried out in a playful way: inflate your cheeks together with the baby, pretending to be a balloon, show how a train hums, gathering your lips into a tube, stop the horse, telling it “Tpr”, compare who has the longest tongue.
• Listen attentively. This will help to identify incorrect pronunciation in time and indicate the incorrect word order in a sentence. Correct your child and explain how to speak. Often children distort words simply out of ignorance.
• Don’t forget about fine motor skills - you can massage the child’s palms with your hands or a not very stiff brush.

With patience and imagination, it is easy to solve the problem and teach the child to speak correctly. However, there are several sounds that are particularly difficult to pronounce: “r”, “sh”, “zh”, “l”. Many children learn to pronounce them clearly at age 4 or even later. There is no need to worry ahead of time, but if at 5 years old the baby continues to burr, lisp, and speak “v” instead of “l,” it is better to consult a speech therapist.

Parents are especially worried and concerned about the stubborn silence of their two-year-old child, when all his peers around him are chatting and even reciting poems. As a rule, reluctance to talk is associated with a tempo delay. This is a completely common phenomenon that occurs even in healthy children. A child can remain silent until the age of 3-4, and then begin to actively talk, outstripping his peers in terms of vocabulary and clarity of pronunciation. We can talk about a tempo delay when the baby is active, willingly communicates with others, understands words, and fulfills requests. Try to stimulate and develop his speech, and the result will not take long to arrive.

How to teach a child to speak at 2 years old

The main motor mechanism for speech development is fine motor skills. It is she who needs to be trained so that the baby begins to talk. Simple exercises will be useful for this:

• modeling from plasticine or dough;
• finger painting;
• searching for small toys in containers with cereals, beans or peas;
• daily finger exercises;
• palm massage.

In addition to exercises, there are many special toys designed to develop skills and abilities, including fine motor skills:

• mosaic;
• puzzles;
• sorters;
• lacing;
• constructors

Try to diversify your activities by combining games and exercises. In addition, a communicative “push” will help to bring the baby out of the state of delayed speech development. If at home a child is used to communicating using gestures, then this causes bewilderment and misunderstanding among peers. Conversations with talking peers often become a “trigger” for the appearance of speech. The effect will increase if daily:

• Read fairy tales and children's poems. This will develop the child’s imagination, introduce him to new words and instill an interest in reading.
• Sing songs, lullabies at night. Firstly, it is pleasant, and secondly, it develops the speech apparatus, an ear for music and a sense of rhythm.
• Connect words with images. By looking at pictures with the baby and telling what is depicted on them, adults help connect words with images, which speeds up the child’s development;
• Describe out loud everything that is around you and constantly ask questions. This stimulates the children's brain well, makes them think and fully express their thoughts in words.

When communicating, avoid “childish” words and distortion of the language, speak clearly and distinctly. This will eliminate the need to retrain the baby, the long transition from “bibiki” to machine, from “yum-yum” to human eating.

Speech tempo delay is easy to correct and is within the power of any parent. However, there are cases when it is better to seek advice from a specialist to rule out neurological pathologies. This is necessary when a two-year-old child:

• does not respond to his name and requests;
• does not pronounce even simple syllables;
• does not indicate the objects in question.
• does not gesticulate, but achieves his goal exclusively by crying.

Only a doctor can identify the problem, and if it is present, prescribe treatment and give recommendations on how to teach the child to speak in this case. If there are no pathologies, everything is in your hands! You may be interested in the article “How to teach a child to count.”

Relationships after divorce

Psychologists distinguish four types of couples who have experienced divorce.

• Comrades . The parents become friends and continue to communicate, even though they do not live under the same roof. All problems are solved together and the child does not feel deprived of care.
• Allies . They are forced to maintain communication for fear of offending their son/daughter. They are negative towards each other. The separated parent communicates with the child with the highest permission of the other.
• Enemies . They used to seem like a model couple, but divorce became a stumbling block. Conflicts, quarrels, litigation. Sometimes it comes to the point that one, at the sight of the other, crosses to the other side of the street. Ex-spouses communicate little and only for significant reasons.
• Singles . The stamp in the passport no longer connects them and contact is completely interrupted. The child understands perfectly well that he has no place in the life of one of the parents. No amount of fairy tales about “pilot dad on a business trip” will help overcome the feeling of one’s own powerlessness and loneliness.

General tips and tricks

The main principle in the learning process is to do no harm. Under no circumstances should you shame your child or scold him. This way you can instill in him self-doubt and fear of making a mistake. This will negatively affect his behavior in adulthood. Everyone’s nervous system is different, and for some children, parental dissatisfaction can cause a complete refusal to talk for a long time.

1. Don't deny problems. If a three-year-old child speaks little, indistinctly, or is completely silent, preferring sign language, he needs help. This can be done at home or contact specialists who will give professional recommendations and answer the question of how to teach a child to speak at 3 years old.
2. Don't compare with other children. Everyone develops according to an individual schedule. Have patience, endurance, and be attentive to your baby’s successes. Praise for achievements, set new goals. There is no need to use the neighbor boy Styopa as an example, who at two years old speaks properly and knows all the letters of the alphabet.
3. Take the time to talk with your child. They allow children to accumulate a sufficient amount of passive vocabulary needed to start speaking.
4. Conduct all classes exclusively in a playful way, with the consent of the child. Use educational toys. They can captivate any “silent person” and bring invaluable benefits. Remember that coercion is a bad motivator.

The question “how to teach a child to speak” is not difficult to solve. If you love your baby, pay enough attention to him, communicate more, you can overcome any difficulties. Be patient and confident that everything will work out. After all, the correct and timely development of the child’s speech apparatus depends only on you. More information about child development can be found in our blog.