Martinez TracyIf at age four a baby does not speak or expresses himself so incomprehensibly that only his mother understands him, it is necessary to find out the reason for the lag in development and take steps to eliminate it.
At the age of 4, speech of a preschooler normally reaches the peak of its activity when the first word is uttered. Not without reason, four-year-olds are called “geeks” – they are constantly and persistently asking questions, reasoning, using sometimes their own logic, inventing their own words, actively communicating with their peers and adults.
Lack of speech at age 4 not only signals a malfunction in the central nervous system, but can also be the cause of delayed mental development.
At this age, differences in a child’s speech skills begin to show. One child clearly pronounces almost all the sounds of the native language, recites many rhymes, retells stories, skillfully using intonation, and the other has not mastered any hissing or sonorous consonants and has difficulty answering simple questions.
Nevertheless, in both cases – these are variants of the norm. This variation in the speech development of children with the same abilities is the influence of the family and being in a children’s group.
Signs of normal speech development of a four-year-old child:
He clearly articulates his thoughts with up to 2,500 words in his active vocabulary. It is noticeable that his speech is more precise and richer compared to the speech between the ages of 3 and 4.
He can name the main features and properties of objects, using adjectives for this purpose, reflects in speech the connections between phenomena.
The child becomes more attentive and can listen to the end of the adult’s response to his or her questions, which are pouring out of the child’s mouth in a continuous stream.
The four-year-old child’s statements consist of simple sentences, but he or she can also use complex constructions.
He is capable of a short monologue, for example, telling his parents about what happened to him during the day in kindergarten, retelling a short text or a read fairy tale.
The grammatical design of statements may not be perfect – words do not agree with each other in gender and number, verbs do not change correctly, difficulty in coordinating numerals with nouns, etc.
There was a period of rhyming words and creating our own “poems. These naive rhyming 2-4 verses amuse children and develop their sense of melodic native speech.
Signs of delayed speech development
The structure of speech defects at this age is varied; virtually no two cases of speech delay are the same. If a child is silent at 4 years old – this is a reason for an urgent examination of the child by a psychoneurologist, neurologist, otolaryngologist, speech therapist and speech therapist. Children may not speak at all, or may be slurred and slurred.
