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What if the child does not speak at 1.5 years?

Alexey Portnov, medical expert
Last reviewed: 19.10.2021

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What if the child does not speak?

In medical practice, children often are older than the year who have not yet started to speak. Such children are examined by speech therapists, psychologists, figuring out whether this child is dumb or backward. It should be said that dullness occurs only in cases of deafness and results from serious diseases of the central nervous system (intracranial birth trauma), or after severe infection (encephalitis, meningitis), is the result of hereditary pathology or the effect of some antibiotics on the auditory nerve (streptomycin ). In case of suspicion of deafness, the child should be examined in the ENT department, where there is a special audiometric cabinet.

Delay speech may be a sign of mental retardation (oligophrenia). To clarify this diagnosis, the child should be consulted by a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

There is a so-called passive speech (the child understands what is required of him) and active speech (verbal expression). Any child who knows how to show (at the age of one year) the people around him (dad, mom, grandparent, etc.) or brings a well-known object at the request (performs the task) should be considered normal. There are children who in two or even four years pronounce few words or even a single word to convey their own thoughts. They hear and understand everything that is said, perform light tasks, express their wishes or protests with signs when it comes to them (hence, they hear!).

Some children, when speech lags, use their own, "understandable", only one (and, maybe, their parents) "tablar" language. He can have intonations and nuances of human speech, but sounds do not convey anything that can be understood by others.

In normal children who have a speech delay, by the 18-24th months there is a sharp change: they begin to pronounce words and express their thoughts no less clearly than children with late speech. (Compensation for prolonged silence: when you start talking, these children do not stop for days.)

When can we talk about the child's mental retardation?

This can be said when a child does not fulfill a few minimum conditions: if at the age of two the child does not yet say three words and can not show the mother, father or grandparent with gestures, and also 3-4 subjects in the room; he can not sit on his own and get up on his feet; if the contact with the outside world is so weak that the child can not distinguish a tender word from a definitive "no!"; If the child does not follow the view of the objects placed or moved from the side of it and does not try to grasp them; if during a game in the "cuckoo" or "horned goat" he does not feel a sense of "waiting"; if during the feeding between him and the person feeding him he does not establish any contact; if the child normally only takes liquid food.

However, the final verdict on the presence of mental retardation or absence of it is borne by a psychiatrist.

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