Dysarthria in children: forms, characterization of the child, correction

Speech disorders in children aged 1-3 years usually do not cause much concern in parents. Omission of sounds in words, incorrect or unclear pronunciation of consonants, intermittent speech for a while even seems funny. In addition, good neighbors and grandmothers of the child unanimously say that there is no reason to worry, by the age of three the child will "speak out". When this does not happen for a long time, the mother with the surprised child runs to a speech therapist, and then to a neurologist, who makes his frightening verdict - dysarthria. But recently dysarthria in children is not so rare, and the diagnosis itself does not give much hope for a cure.

Epidemiology

According to epidemiological studies, about 80% of cases of the disease are associated with disturbances in the development of the fetus during the intrauterine period, and birth injuries are considered a secondary cause, which only complicates the situation, but in itself rarely leads to dysarthria.

As statistics show, motor dysarthria in children, which is characterized by neurological symptoms in addition to articulatory and phonetic ones, develops against the background of intrauterine development pathologies. But pure speech dysarthria is much less common, and its development is associated with birth injuries.

Dysarthria itself is not considered an independent disease, but is one of the manifestations of a child's developmental disorder under the influence of the above-described factors. Most often, dysarthria is one of the main symptoms of cerebral palsy.

Thus, in children diagnosed with cerebral palsy, dysarthria is determined in 65-85% of cases. Erased dysarthria, which manifests itself in the form of unclear pronunciation of sibilant and hissing consonants, occurs in 25-30% of children. As an independent disease in completely healthy children, dysarthria occurs only in 3-6% of cases.

The danger is that this pathology has a tendency to further increase, which means that dysarthria in children is diagnosed in an increasing number of boys and girls every year.

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Causes dysarthria in a child

Dysarthria is one of the types of speech disorders, when problems with pronunciation of sounds occur due to diseases of the nervous system and are caused by insufficient communication between the central nervous system and the articulatory apparatus. The child's mischief and unwillingness to communicate normally have nothing to do with it.

If a baby cannot pronounce a couple of consonants, there is no need to think about a serious pathology. It is another matter if his speech is generally slurred and intermittent, the tempo and emotional coloring are disturbed, if there are disturbances in the respiratory rhythm during the conversation. If the baby's speech resembles a conversation with a full mouth, this is already a reason to worry, since dysarthria in children is most often one of the symptoms of such an unpleasant pathology as cerebral palsy (CP).

Many loving parents are worried about why it happened that their child developed problems with pronunciation, which for some reason are very difficult to correct. Maybe they missed something by not teaching their son or daughter to speak correctly at an early age?

In fact, parents are often not to blame for the development of pathology at all. At least, we are not talking about shortcomings in speech training.

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Risk factors

The causes of dysarthria in children are most often factors that affect the child's development in the perinatal period. Risk factors for the development of the disease may include:

• Toxicosis of pregnancy, which can make itself known both in the first months of pregnancy and much later (which is not so scary in terms of the likelihood of developing brain pathology in the fetus)
• Fetal hypoxia, which results in the brain not receiving the nutrients and oxygen it needs for proper development,
• Various diseases, especially infectious ones, that the expectant mother suffered from in the early stages of pregnancy
• A wide range of chronic diseases of the mother, which developed before the conception of the child, but also occurred during the gestation of the baby. In this regard, any pathologies of the gastrointestinal tract, cardiovascular and genitourinary systems, as well as pulmonary tuberculosis are considered dangerous
• Mental or physical trauma to a pregnant woman
• Radiation Exposure During Pregnancy
• Rhesus conflict between mother and fetus, blood group mismatch
• Alcohol, nicotine and drug abuse during pregnancy

But not only problems arising in the intrauterine period (especially in its first trimester) can provoke the development of dysarthria. The culprit may be birth injuries due to unsuccessful use of obstetric aids, craniocerebral injuries in newborns due to inept actions of the clinic staff, cerebral hemorrhages caused by pressure drops during cesarean section or pathologically rapid labor, asphyxia due to slow passage through the birth canal or as a result of umbilical cord entanglement.

The baby may be in danger even in the first months of independent life. The causes of dysarthria in children may be severe diseases suffered in infancy, such as meningitis, hydrocephalitis, encephalitis, meningoencephalitis, purulent otitis. And also if there was poisoning with food or chemicals or craniocerebral injuries in early childhood.

Sometimes a premature pregnancy can be the cause of a severe speech disorder in a child, although this happens very rarely. However, cerebral palsy is considered the most common cause of dysarthria in children. Congenital genetically determined pathologies of brain development, which often occur with poor heredity, hereditary pathologies of the nervous and neuromuscular systems are also possible.

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Pathogenesis

The pathogenesis of dysarthria is based on organic lesions of certain parts of the central and peripheral nervous system. Externally, such lesions are mainly manifested in the violation of the pronunciation of sounds, words and sentences, although there are other symptoms that parents pay little attention to for the time being.

You may ask, what does the nervous system have to do with speech activity? The fact is that the control of the motor activity of the articulatory apparatus is carried out by separate structures of the brain. These include the motor and peripheral nerves that go to the speech apparatus, consisting of the tongue, cheeks, palate, lips, pharynx, lower jaw, as well as the larynx, diaphragm and chest muscles.

Emotional speech operations such as laughter, screaming or crying are carried out by means of the nuclei of the peripheral nerves, which are located in the trunk and subcortical region of the brain. As for the motor mechanism of speech, it is determined by the work of other structures of the brain: the subcortical cerebellar nuclei and the conducting pathways responsible for muscle tone and the sequence of contractions of the speech muscles. The cortical structures of the brain are also responsible for the ability of the speech apparatus to perform certain actions and its partial innervation.

Due to organic damage to some parts of the brain and the associated motor pathway of the nervous system, full transmission of nerve impulses becomes impossible, sensitivity and muscle strength (paresis) decrease or even paralysis of various parts of the speech apparatus occurs. All this leads to disturbances in the pronunciation of sounds and words, changes in the timbre of the voice and breathing rhythm during conversation.

As we can see, in order for a person to begin to speak correctly and clearly, the coordinated work of the brain, central and peripheral nervous system is necessary.

The causes of damage to the brain structures responsible for speech may be hidden in the prenatal period, but sometimes birth pathologies, as well as serious illnesses suffered in infancy, can also play a role in the development of the disease.

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Symptoms dysarthria in a child

Dysarthria in both adults and children does not appear out of nowhere. Usually, its appearance is associated with some traumatic factor. However, in adulthood, the disease does not lead to the disintegration of the entire speech system and does not affect the intellectual development of a person. Adult patients with dysarthria perceive conversation by ear to a sufficient extent, do not lose the once acquired writing and reading skills.

But for babies, such a pathology is more than serious, because it can cause the child to lag behind in development, poor performance at school and difficulties in socialization. Therefore, it is so important to pay attention to the first signs of dysarthria in time, in order to begin its treatment as soon as possible, before it negatively affects the child's future.

Speaking about the various manifestations of dysarthria in preschool children, it is worth noting that the symptoms of this disease are multifaceted and depend on which part of the brain and nervous system was damaged the most at the time.

General symptoms of dysarthria in children, which can manifest themselves to a greater or lesser extent at different periods of the child's life, most likely indicate the development of this pathology. But this does not mean that all the described symptoms must be present; there may be fewer or more of them. The latter occurs if dysarthria develops against the background of another pathology.

So, parents should take their child to a specialist for examination if they observe the following symptoms in their child:

• Late speech development: the baby speaks his first words at the age of 1.5-3 years, and phrases even later

• In the child's speech, there is an incorrect pronunciation of individual sounds or even syllables, which is difficult to correct.
• Reinforcing the correct pronunciation of sounds (automation) requires significantly more time than usual
• During verbal communication, the baby finds it difficult to speak, he suffocates because his breathing becomes shallow and irregular.
• There is a tendency for the timbre of the voice to change, it becomes either too high, turning into a squeak, or unusually muffled, quiet
• There is a feeling that the child has a stuffy nose, although this is not confirmed by examination of the nasal passages
• The child does not pronounce some sounds, replaces them with others or skips them altogether, and this applies to both consonants and vowels
• There is interdental or lateral pronunciation of sibilant and hissing sounds
• Voiced consonants become devoiced and hard consonants become softer.
• Unnaturally monotonous speech in a child, often without emotional coloring and alternation of lowered and raised tones
• Speech is either too fast or too slow, and still just as slurred.
• Noticeable weakness of the articulatory muscles. The child either presses his lips too tightly or does not close them at all. There is significant drooling not related to teething. Sometimes the tongue, whose muscles are also insufficiently innervated, may hang out of the slightly open mouth.

In addition to speech disorders, dysarthria, especially in children with cerebral palsy, can cause other unpleasant symptoms, some of which are visible even in infancy. Observation of children with dysarthria in the postpartum period shows that such babies often exhibit motor restlessness, sleep poorly, or have a disrupted sleep-wake rhythm. During feeding, they do not hold the breast or pacifier well in their mouth, sucking movements are rather sluggish, and the child quickly gets tired and falls asleep. Such babies choke and spit up milk more often than others, eat and gain weight worse, and often refuse to breastfeed altogether due to difficulties with sucking.

The baby may lag behind in development. This is manifested in such moments as the inability to hold the head up to six months and concentrate on objects. The baby may start crawling and walking late.

Any serious illnesses suffered by the baby during this period can easily complicate the situation. We are talking about viral infections (for example, flu), pneumonia, pyelonephritis, severe forms of gastrointestinal diseases, etc. Colds with fever can be accompanied by convulsive syndrome in such children.

At the age of over 1.5-2 years, other alarming symptoms appear that are not related to the functioning of the speech apparatus:

• Limited facial expressions, the child rarely smiles
• There are certain problems with chewing, the child may refuse solid food
• It is difficult for the baby to rinse his mouth after eating or brushing his teeth
• Noticeable clumsiness in movements, difficulties with performing physical exercises during exercise, problems with performing dance movements and perceiving music and its rhythm
• Involuntary uncontrolled movements (hyperkinesis) may appear during speaking and other articulatory movements.
• Cases of vomiting are becoming more frequent
• Sometimes a trembling of the tip of the tongue is observed.

Children with dysarthria against the background of cerebral palsy often have paresis of the muscles of not only the speech apparatus, but also the trunk and limbs, which significantly reduces their cognitive activity and complicates orientation in space. They also have paresis of the muscles responsible for eye movement, which slows down the development of visual-spatial representations, and the functions of fixing the gaze on an object and its active search are impaired.

In many cases, emotional-volitional and secondary mental disorders occur. The manifestations of such disorders can be different:

• Increased anxiety levels
• Irritability and tearfulness
• Rapid fatigue and general exhaustion
• Lack of sense of humor
• The appearance of affective outbursts, up to and including behavior characteristic of psychopathy
• A penchant for reading books and watching action or horror films with inherent scenes of violence

In general, children with dysarthria are characterized by mental instability, which manifests itself in frequent and sudden changes in mood and emotions.

Perception in children with dysarthria

Child development is inextricably linked to the presentation and perception of various information. Information can be perceived in three ways:

• Visual (looking at and evaluating an object)
• Auditory (listening perception of speech)
• Kinesthetic (studying using the senses: what an object tastes like, smells like, feels like).

Dysarthria in children involves difficulties with certain types of perception. Most often, this concerns visual or spatial perception, as well as auditory perception of speech.

Visual perception disorders in children with dysarthria manifest themselves as follows:

• The child does not distinguish between some colors and shades
• Difficulty recognizing objects by their outlines
• The child has difficulty naming an object if it is crossed out in the picture

Spatial perception disorders have more extensive symptoms:

• Lack of knowledge about one's body for a certain age
• Difficulties with the definitions “right-left”: at 3 years old, a child cannot show where the right and where the left arm or leg is, and at 5 years old, he cannot show and voice his actions
• The child does not perceive the face diagram, cannot show where the eye, mouth, and nose are
• The holistic perception of objects is impaired

In middle and senior preschool age, it can be noted that:

• The baby does not know how to maintain proportions, nor how to analyze them
• The child cannot correctly place the drawing on a piece of paper
• The drawing itself is characterized by generalization and a lack of detail.
• Such children often draw a person as a kind of kolobok from the fairy tale of the same name.

Visual and spatial perception disorders are also reflected in the child's speech. The vocabulary of such children is rather poor (especially regarding nouns and adjectives), in conversation they rarely use adverbs indicating the location of objects (back-front, top-bottom, right-left, etc.), and spatial prepositions (on, above, under, from under, etc.).

Children's acquisition and memorization of material deteriorates with increasing distance from the source of information, therefore it is recommended to seat children with dysarthria at the front desks.

Almost all children diagnosed with dysarthria have attention deficit disorder. They are not assiduous, cannot do one thing for a long time, tend to interrupt their interlocutor and elders, do not listen to the end of what they are told, and are easily distracted.

Due to problems with pronunciation and attention, children with dysarthria often have difficulty perceiving speech by ear if it is not supported by the ability to perceive visually. Because of this, verbal memory, which is responsible for memorizing verbal information, also suffers. In some cases, there are also violations of other types of memory: visual, motor, and movement.

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Motor skills in children with dysarthria

The development of a child with dysarthria has its own characteristics, starting from the first days of his "independent" life outside the mother's womb. They begin to hold their heads upright, sit, crawl, stand, and walk later than their healthy peers. They have a significantly reduced interest in the environment, despite restlessness and mobility, and there is no desire to communicate with adults (there is no "revitalization complex" when the baby sees relatives). Up to a year, such babies cannot distinguish relatives from strangers.

Dysarthria in small children is also manifested in the fact that they are not attracted to toys, even if they are in the hands of their mother or hanging over the crib, the child does not pay attention to them, does not follow their movements. Such children do not know how to communicate using gestures, and their speech activity is significantly impaired, which makes speech incomprehensible to others.

It is clear that all these developmental deviations cannot but affect the first conscious movements of the hands - grasping, with the help of which children learn about the world, perceiving objects by touch. With dysarthria, active grasping is absent in children. There is no correct perception of the size and shape of an object, which means that the child tries to take both large and small objects, as well as objects of different shapes, by equally placing his fingers. This indicates that visual-spatial coordination is not formed in children.

Object activity is also impaired in such children. Even if they pick up an object or a toy, they are not interested in what it is and what it is for. A child aged 3-6 years may hold an object incorrectly and perform actions that contradict common sense or the purpose of the object (bang a doll on the table, put a pyramid together in the wrong order, etc.). It is precisely such inadequate actions with objects that allow us to recognize a child with dysarthria.

In early preschool age, dysarthria in children also manifests itself in underdevelopment of the motor sphere. This is evident in awkward, imprecise, poorly coordinated movements, weak muscle strength, poor sense of tempo, lack of rhythm in involuntary movements, difficulties in performing work according to oral instructions. Such children sometimes cannot hold an object in their hands, hold it either not firmly enough, or apply excessive force. Very often, children with dysarthria prefer to work with one hand.

Preschoolers have poorly developed fine motor skills, although by the age of 6 their interest in studying the world around them is already quite strong. Difficulties arise when performing fine differentiated movements of the fingers and hands, for example, when lacing shoes or tying shoelaces, dressing, buttoning buttons.

Problems also arise in work activities. For example, in labor lessons, such children are unable to mold a plasticine figure that corresponds to the task or at least resembles something specific. They have poor control over their movements and the force of their squeezing.

Pathologies of fine motor development in children with dysarthria include:

• Insufficient flexibility of the hands
• Weakness of muscle strength
• Unilateral impairment of fine motor skills, when the child constantly uses one hand, only occasionally including the other in the work
• Involuntary convulsive contractions of the arms, shoulders, head and facial muscles, as well as trembling of the hands. Convulsive movements can be either sharp and intermittent or slow and pulling.
• The movement of the tongue may be accompanied by parallel movement of the fingers (often the thumb of the right hand)

Motor developmental disabilities may vary slightly among children with different types of dysarthria.

Features of graphomotor skills in children with dysarthria

The development of graphomotor skills in children depends on several factors:

• Development of gross motor skills in early childhood
• Good fine motor skills (work of hands and fingers)
• Skills for performing a series of movements
• Development of visual-spatial representations
• Training of visual, motor and movement memory

As we can see from all of the above, it is impossible to talk about the sufficient development of graphomotor skills in children with dysarthria without special classes.

The following are considered to be the characteristics of graphomotor skills in children with dysarthria:

• Difficulties in visual activity (difficulty holding a pencil, using scissors, controlling the pressure on paper)
• Problems with performing actions that require precision and synchronicity (drawing, gluing, folding, tying, etc.)
• Difficulties with spatial perception and conveying the position of an object on paper, as well as correlating and maintaining proportions
• Drawing lines using jerky, uneven movements
• Inability to draw a clear straight line when drawing geometric shapes and printed letters. Slowness in completing a task

Dysarthria may have its own manifestations in different children. Much depends on the type of disease and the severity of the pathology, as well as on concomitant diseases.

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Forms

Classification of dysarthria can be carried out according to several parameters:

• By degree of expression
• By degree of clarity of speech
• Based on existing symptoms (syndromological approach)
• By localization of damage to the brain and nervous system

According to the degree of severity, the following are distinguished:

• Anarthria (inability to communicate)
• Dysarthria itself (the child speaks, but his speech is slurred, difficult to understand by others, there are breathing problems, but there is no emotional expressiveness)
• Erased dysarthria (all symptoms of dysarthria are present, including neurological ones, but in an unexpressed form). Erased dysarthria in children is quite common, but at the same time, due to understandable circumstances, it often goes unnoticed by the child's parents, who cannot do without the help of a speech therapist.

According to the degree of speech intelligibility (according to the severity of the pathology), 4 stages of the disease are distinguished:

1. The mildest degree, when speech disorders are diagnosed by a doctor during an examination. Mild dysarthria in children is rare, usually the disorders are more serious and noticeable without the help of a doctor in the form of a violation of the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, as well as neurological symptoms
2. Moderate severity of pathology, if the pronunciation disorders are obvious, but speech is quite understandable
3. Severe degree, when the baby's speech is barely understandable to others
4. An extremely severe degree, in which speech is either completely absent or is practically incomprehensible even to close people.

The syndromological approach, taking into account neurological symptoms, identifies the following types of dysarthria in children and adults:

• Spastic-paretic is most often diagnosed in young children with bilateral damage to the pyramidal tract.

The symptoms are generally similar to pseudobulbar palsy. These are disorders of sound pronunciation and articulation (from early childhood, a small number of sounds, no onomatopoeia, increased tone of various muscles during speech, problems with pronunciation of front-lingual consonants, nasal tone of vowels, slow speech rate, creaky or hoarse voice), arrhythmic breathing, involuntary movements, problems with the development of voluntary motor skills, etc.

• Spastic-rigid is observed in children with bilateral paresis of the limbs.

Symptoms: increased tone of the upper body, speech and swallowing are given with effort, chewing movements are replaced by sucking, drinking and biting are difficult, articulation is limited, facial expressions are poor, the voice is muffled, tense, pronunciation of all sounds is impaired, speech is slurred.

• Spastic-hyperkinetic in children is diagnosed with the hyperkinetic form of cerebral palsy.

Symptoms: hyperkinesis of the muscles of the tongue and face, abnormalities in pronunciation are not uniform, speech is poorly understood, chewing and swallowing processes are impaired, there is no salivation, breathing problems are noticeable when speaking, the voice is vibrating with interruptions and changing pitch, and sometimes strength.

• Spastic-ataxic dysarthria is characteristic of the atonic-astatic form of cerebral palsy.

Symptoms: loss of coordination of voluntary muscle actions (scanned rhythm of speech, inaccuracy in performing articulatory movements, lack of coordination between the lips and tongue, speech is slow).

• Atactic-hyperkinetic
• Spastic-atactic-hyperkinetic

The most common classification in the literature based on the degree of localization of the lesion identifies the following types of dysarthria:

• Pseudobulbar
• Bulbar
• Cerebellar
• Cork
• Subcortical (extrapyramidal)

Pseudobulbar dysarthria is considered the most common pathology in young children, but it most often develops against the background of another “popular” pathology – cerebral palsy.

The pathology arises due to general muscle paralysis as a result of exposure to various negative factors at different stages of the child's development. The first signs are already visible in infancy in the form of a weak squeak and an underdeveloped sucking reflex, weak retention of the breast in the mouth, salivation, and choking during feeding.

In early preschool age, motor disorders of the speech apparatus become more pronounced. The baby mispronounces sounds because he perceives them incorrectly by ear. Problems with pronunciation of polysyllabic words (4 syllables or more) begin. The child skips syllables, blurs words that contain more than 2 consonants in a row.

Children with this type of dysarthria have a tense face, the tongue is deviated back, and sometimes there are inadequate eye and eyebrow movements. The voice is weak, often hoarse or hoarse.

Usually, babies do not know how to jump, run, or take care of themselves (get dressed and put on shoes) normally.

The most impaired are voluntary movements and fine movements of the tip of the tongue. However, some articulatory functions are preserved. Children can laugh, cry, scream, lick their lips, and make ringing sounds, which is often observed during feeding.

Bulbar dysarthria can develop as a result of an inflammatory process in the medulla oblongata or in the presence of neoplasms in it.

It is characterized by paralysis of the facial muscles, as well as the muscles of the tongue, lips and soft palate. In this case, there is slow, slurred speech without facial expressions, difficulty swallowing, a weak, fading voice, and muffled vowels and voiced consonants.

This type of dysarthria is almost never seen in children.

Cerebellar dysarthria in children is also rare. It is associated with damage to the cerebellum and disruption of its connections with other brain structures.

The disease manifests itself in the form of nasal, slow, intermittent speech with sharp shouts and fading (scanned rhythm of speech). There is no emotional coloring in the conversation.

Cortical dysarthria in children occurs due to a disruption in the functioning of the cerebral cortex responsible for articulation. Depending on which parts of the cerebral cortex are affected, it is divided into kinesthetic postcentral and kinetic premotor.

In terms of spoken language, violations are visible in the pronunciation of individual sounds, although the structure of the word remains correct. At the same time, the child pronounces individual sounds correctly, but distorts them in the composition of the word. Postcentral dysarthria is characterized by sound substitutions in words, and premotor dysarthria is characterized by delays in the pronunciation of syllables, omission or addition of extra sounds if 2 consonants are in a row.

Stuttering is present when speaking at a fast pace. There is also mild paresis of the hands, which manifests itself as muscle weakness.

Subcortical dysarthria occurs due to damage to the subcortical nodes (subcortical nuclei and their neural connections). It is characterized by disturbances in the melody (tempo, rhythm and intonation) of speech.

A distinctive feature is still the unevenness of speech. The child can speak normally for some time, clearly pronouncing words and sounds, and then suddenly switch to an indistinct whisper, which is a consequence of articulatory spasm. This is due to the fact that the tone of the muscles of the child's speech apparatus is constantly changing, there are involuntary movements that distort speech. Articulation of vowel sounds is often more impaired than consonants.

Sometimes in the literature, parkinsonian and cold dysarthria are also distinguished, but they refer to pathologies that develop in older people against the background of certain diseases (Parkinson's disease, myasthenia).

Absent form of dysarthria

Dysarthria in children is not a rare phenomenon today, and most often a speech therapist encounters its erased form in his work. The insidiousness of this pathology is that parents can ignore the underdevelopment of the child's speech for a long time, attributing everything to the child's young age, when pronunciation disorders are not uncommon.

Erased dysarthria is usually detected in children after 5 years, despite the fact that many children who have suffered birth injuries or illnesses at an early age are observed by a neurologist before the age of one. Indistinct speech with omissions and substitutions of sounds, drooling during conversation and lack of cognitive interest do not cause much concern for the time being. Problems begin when the child needs to be prepared for school.

Parents and teachers are faced with the fact that children with slurred speech lag behind their peers in some respects. They have difficulty moving to music, they are slow and awkward, get tired quickly, and cannot imitate, repeating the movements of the teacher. Self-care skills are very difficult for sick children. During classes, children hold a pencil poorly, have difficulty drawing, making appliques, and modeling with plasticine.

But at school, such difficulties will lead to poor academic performance and the need to study in special institutions.

The problem can, of course, be corrected, but this will require long-term, regular, individual sessions with the child, in which both a speech therapist and loving parents take part.

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Complications and consequences

When we talk about dysarthria as an organic brain lesion that arose in the womb or early childhood against the background of other pathologies, then complications of this disease are usually not discussed. Problems begin if the underlying disease, which inhibits the child's mental and physical development, develops further due to insufficient treatment.

But it is worth dwelling on the consequences of the disease in more detail, so that the parents of such children realize what difficulties their son or daughter will have to face in later life if mom and dad do not assess the scale of the problem in time and do not seek the necessary help. And it is advisable to do this in early childhood, when only the “first signs” appear, foreshadowing troubles in the future.

So, lack of interest in the environment at an early age slows down the child's development, and in particular his cognitive abilities. Hence the violation of visual-spatial orientation, insufficient knowledge of the shapes and properties of an object, underdevelopment of various types of memory, which negatively affects the motor function of the baby. And these are problems with self-care and learning.

Poor graphomotor skills are the cause of low academic performance, because along with listening, writing also suffers. Poor assimilation of the primary school curriculum makes it impossible to study in a regular school, although such a child may not lag behind his peers in intellectual terms.

The older the child becomes, the more deeply he or she realizes his or her inferiority. Speech disorders can cause discomfort in communication with children and adults, which in adolescence leads to the boy or girl separating from their peers, becoming withdrawn and uncommunicative.

Slurred speech, especially in the presence of some neurological symptoms, creates difficulties in further socialization when the time comes to acquire a profession. And this is a change of educational institution, where they have already gotten used to your shortcomings, to another, where it is unknown how they will accept you.

In the future, certain difficulties may arise during work activities, where it is impossible to do without communication and performing certain tasks. But it was precisely with this that problems arose in children with dysarthria, and remained unresolved.

Incomprehensible speech and clumsiness often irritate those around you, which negatively affects the psycho-emotional state of a person with speech and coordination problems. It is difficult for a person to start a family, good friends, get a decent job (and dreams have not been cancelled!), hence the feeling of uselessness, depression, isolation from society.

I think there is no need to continue. Is this the fate that loving parents want for their long-awaited baby? But everything can be changed. Dysarthria in children is not a death sentence. Even if it is not possible to get rid of the life-ruining disease, it is still possible to significantly correct the baby's condition, allowing him to communicate normally with others, in most cases. Isn't this a reason to fight for the future of your child?

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