Help! Teenager stopped talking to me

There is a joke - first parents wait for the child to speak, and then they can’t wait for him to shut up.
Little explorers of the world are called “why girls”, they are interested in everything and with their questions and conversations they are able to “chat” the most patient mother. However, there are also silent people. Now all the peers are talking with all their might, but this kid doesn’t even say “mom.” From a certain age, this situation causes justifiable concern among parents.

When should you worry?

Each child has a “convenient” pace of development. One began to babble earlier, the other was the first to sit down or stand up, and the third walked and spoke before his comrades in the sandbox. If age-related variations occur within a couple of months, there is no need to worry.

However, all parents need to know the norms of children’s speech development. If the lag becomes significant (and speech therapists consider a delay of no more than 2-3 months to be a normal option for a particular skill), it is better to seek advice from a specialist.

Children usually begin to say the notorious word “mother” by the age of one or one and a half years. What if the first birthday has been celebrated a long time ago, but the long-awaited word is still missing? Is it time to go to the doctors?

Consulting a specialist never hurts. When it comes to speech development, you shouldn’t wait for everything to form “somehow on its own.” However, in order not to panic ahead of time, take a closer look at your baby. It is quite possible that he is simply a little delayed in pronouncing the words so expected by his parents and nothing terrible happens. Important factors:

1. A one-year-old child understands speech addressed to him. That is, it responds to its own name and gives an adequate reaction to the words of its parents.
2. There are no hearing or vision impairments.
3. The baby's cooing was replaced by babbling speech. The child is already trying to designate specific words with some kind of imitative syllables.
4. In games, there is a noticeable desire to repeat after an adult and perform given actions.

At an early age, the process of speech formation is closely related to the development of the psyche and thinking. Parents should keep an eye on these aspects. If any suspicions still arise, it is best to seek advice from specialists.

Who to visit:

• neurologist;
• child psychologist;
• speech therapist-defectologist.

If you suspect your teen is having suicidal thoughts

Even if this is just a suspicion of intent to commit suicide, you need to immediately find out how justified it is. Act calmly. It is important that you talk about your concerns calmly, without accusations. Sometimes when parents are very worried, they end up saying, "Don't think that way" or "You shouldn't feel that way." So both parents and children are faced not with love and care, as intended, but with criticism. Children react negatively to such assurances.

Psychologists also recommend:

• Let your child know that you love and support them whenever they are having a hard time.
• Validate his feelings by saying things that show your empathy, such as, “That sounds like it was really hard,” “That could be really painful.”
• Try to get professional help, and explain to your child that asking for help is not a sign of weakness.

When it comes to silent help, remember that it is not your fault. You must decide what is important to you and give your child the opportunity to grow. In addition, you must also put your child's health and well-being above all else, and that means staying connected even when maintaining it becomes difficult and not at all fun.

How to teach a child to say “mama”?

So, if your baby, according to doctors, is developing in accordance with the norm, he does not have any special problems, but for some reason he has not started talking, parents can force things a little.

The main condition for the correct formation of speech is communication. The biggest misconception of some mothers and fathers is that they think that the child does not understand them yet, and therefore there is no need to talk to him. This is not true at all!

The more you communicate with your baby, the more words will be in his passive vocabulary. This means that over time they will become active. In addition, it is by listening to speech addressed to him that the child learns to speak!

How to communicate with a small child:

• Use the correct forms of words in your speech. Undoubtedly, many kids say “bo-bo” about a scratch or “beep-beep” about all types of transport. This sounds very nice, but parents should not make it easy for their child to learn. Let the “long” words remain in a passive form for some time, but over time the baby will speak as he should!
• Try to speak in simple words that the child can understand. Repeat them many times every day.
• Speak as clearly as possible and face your baby. It is by “reading” articulation that the child learns to pronounce new words.
• Create the illusion of dialogue. Ask questions and answer them yourself. But take a short break, give the child the opportunity to insert a familiar word at one point.
• Talk about everything. Comment on the process of dressing, washing, talk about what you see while walking, and so on. After all, the baby learns the world with the help of his parents.
• Do not turn on television or radio in the background. Such sounds are not perceived by small children as speech, which means they will not teach him anything.
• Use your pacifier less often. How will a baby talk if his mouth is always busy? In addition, constant sucking can ruin your bite and lead to poor articulation.

How loud can silent help be?!

Whether you should be concerned depends on the extent to which your child has stopped talking to you. Let's look at 3 possible scenarios:

Case No. 1.

You and your daughter used to be “best friends.” She told you absolutely everything, and now she has suddenly closed herself off from you and only shares her personal thoughts with her friends.

In this case, you have nothing to worry about. And no matter how much it hurts, you should try not to take her choices personally. She does what she has to do: she grows up.

What to do:

• Don't lecture her or tell her you're hurt.
• Try to maintain a positive relationship with her.
• Involve her in activities you enjoyed doing together.
• Eat with her.
• Do not squeeze any information or information out of her. Instead, share something funny or interesting about your life. If you open up, she will most likely do the same.
• Talk to her like an adult, express your respect, and let her know that you value her opinion and expect respect in return.

Case No. 2.

Your once sweet and affectionate child now responds to you with monosyllabic answers and annoyed eye rolls. He spends as little time as possible with you and seems to reserve all his enthusiasm for hanging out with friends.

While this can be infuriating and you may be tempted to punish the behavior, know that it is still within normal teenage development. Focusing on peer relationships helps children learn to be less dependent on their parents—a necessary step toward becoming happy, independent adults. However, it is still your job to insist on respect and ensure your child's safety.

What to do:

• Set appropriate boundaries, but also focus on strengthening your relationship. You won't get respect if he doesn't feel connected to you.
• Resist the urge to lecture. If you can overcome this temptation, your teen won't need to push you away to become their own person.
• Remember that teenagers can be emotional. But disrespect can hide stress, fear, uncertainty about the future, and more. So instead of getting offended, remind your teenager who he really is. For example, you could say something like, “I know you're upset and this is not typical behavior for you.” This way you can create a conversation starter.

Situation No. 3.

Your child doesn't talk to anyone and spends all his time in his room, behind a closed door. He does not socialize with friends, has lost interest in activities that once brought him pleasure, and is increasingly isolated from other people.

This behavior is of serious concern and is outside the scope of normal adolescent development. You need to find out if your child has experienced any trauma (bullying, rape) or is abusing drugs or alcohol.

These behaviors may also indicate the onset of a serious mental health problem such as depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which become increasingly common in the late teens and twenties.

It is dangerous if a teenager withdraws from everyone he knows. For example, he goes into the online world, which cannot replace communication with people in real life. Online relationships can become very intense and develop quickly. So, it can be difficult to know if the people your son or daughter is friends with online are good influences, or even if who they say they are is true.

What to do

• If your child seems hostile and angry, give him the opportunity to explain if you did something wrong.
• Privacy can go a long way. A teenager's room should not be closed to parents. You have the right to know what your child is doing in his room, especially if he is there alone for hours.
• Insist on more information. Quite often, questions like “Where are you going?” teenagers answer: “Outside,” and to “When will you be back?” They answer “Later.” Stay calm and firm. Tell your teen you need details.
• In cases where your child refuses to communicate, it is recommended to monitor his social networks.
• Seek professional help from a qualified psychologist or psychotherapist.

Speech norms for children

Knowing what children should be able to do at different ages helps judge the presence or absence of pathology.

Treatment and correction of speech delay

The Bersenev Medical Center provides comprehensive treatment for delayed psycho-speech development in children. The clinic’s specialists draw up an individual program for the treatment and correction of mental retardation for each individual child. The program includes a set of rehabilitation activities carried out by a pediatric neurologist, massage therapist and speech therapist. A psychologist, a reflexologist and, of course, parents also take part in the treatment.

One of the main tasks of parents is to eliminate the causes that caused the delay in psycho-speech development (this applies to families with an unfavorable environment). Very important points in treatment are attentiveness to the child, moral support and patience, because correction of PVD is a complex and painstaking process.

If you detect the problem in a timely manner and contact a specialist, complete all the appointments and have a good attitude, you are guaranteed to have good results, high effectiveness of treatment, and the fact that ZPRD will not affect your child’s future in any way.

What should a child say at two years old?

Imperfections in the pronunciation side of a child’s speech at this age are a natural phenomenon. He still pronounces most sounds incorrectly, misses sounds when pronouncing words and individual syllables when pronouncing polysyllabic words, and softens consonants. The voice of some children is still quiet and weak, they pronounce even simple words indistinctly, and this is also a variant of the norm. Two-year-olds have a small vocabulary, they use words denoting well-known objects and toys, and can still use lightweight words like “bye-bye” instead of “sleep”, “yum-yum” instead of “eat”.

However, a child is already able to speak at 2 years old in short phrases of 2-4 words, and can ask a question, for example, “What is this?” A two-year-old child with speech development within normal limits, on his own initiative, addresses peers and familiar adults, using the active vocabulary that is available to him. And not so little is available to him - at the border between the second and third years, the vocabulary is at least 50-100 words, and by 2.5 years this number triples.

If you work with the baby purposefully, telling him the signs of objects and actions that children and adults perform, then the active dictionary contains not only nouns, but also adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.

Despite a fairly capacious vocabulary, the words in a sentence are often inconsistent and phrases are constructed incorrectly. The inability to form correct grammatical forms is the norm at this age. For example, if a child at 2 years old says this: at home - at home, after washing, a beautiful jacket - a beautiful jacket, a rug - a rug, then this is normal.

The baby not only asks questions himself, he is able to answer simple questions from an adult, that is, he distinguishes interrogative intonation. In addition, he can follow simple verbal instructions consisting of 2-3 steps: “first take the spoon, and then take it to the table.” Since the organs of articulation are not strong enough to clearly pronounce sounds, 2-year-old children still pronounce the sounds incorrectly: s, s, z, z, ts, sh, zh, h, sch, l, r.

Repeating someone else's actions

Finally, at 18-24 months, it is natural for a child to imitate the actions of those around them, for example, waving “bye-bye” to you when you say goodbye, or launching an airplane if you have done so. Not imitating your actions could be a potential sign of autism.

Thus, the absence of speech in itself does not indicate autism. It is important to take into account how the child plays, whether he can imitate other people’s actions, whether he understands language, and whether he tries to communicate using gestures. If he doesn't imitate other people in any way while playing and if he doesn't understand other people's speech, there may be more than just a speech delay.

Pointing gesture to ask for something or get attention

First of all, if we are talking about a child between the ages of 18 and 24 months, I check if he has a pointing gesture. By 18 months, or at most by two years, the child should be able to attract your attention to something using a pointing gesture.

And we are not talking about the child pointing at something once a month - he should do it constantly. The child should point to the items that he wants to receive, for example, a pack of juice or a toy.

He also has to point at something to get your attention - this is what we call divided attention, pointing to show you something. For example, a child points to a plane in the sky so that you look at it too. Even if he can't say "airplane" yet, he can point at it and say "oh!" - this is a very good sign. One of the main “alarm bells” regarding autism is the absence of a pointing gesture.