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What to do if a child at 1.5 years old does not speak?
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 04.07.2025
- What to do if the child does not speak?
In medical practice, we often encounter children over one year old who have not yet begun to speak. Such children are examined by speech therapists and psychologists, finding out whether the child is mute or retarded. It should be said that muteness occurs only in cases of deafness and occurs as a result of serious diseases of the central nervous system (intracranial birth injury), or after a severe infection (encephalitis, meningitis), is the result of hereditary pathology or the effect of certain antibiotics (streptomycin) on the auditory nerve. If deafness is suspected, the child must be examined in the ENT department, where there is a special audiometric room.
Delayed speech may be a sign of mental retardation (oligophrenia). To clarify this diagnosis, the child should be consulted by a psychiatrist and psychologist.
There is so-called passive speech (the child understands what is required of him) and active speech (verbal expression). Any child who can show (at the age of one year) the people close to him (dad, mom, grandma, grandpa, etc.) or bring a known object when asked (does a task) should be considered normal. There are children who at two and even four years old say few words or even no words to convey their own thoughts. They hear and understand everything that is said, do easy tasks, express their desires or protests with signs when it comes to them (which means they hear!).
Some children with speech delays use their own "gibberish" language, understandable only to them (and perhaps their parents). It may have the intonations and nuances of human speech, but the sounds do not convey anything that can be understood by others.
In normal children who had a speech delay, a sharp change occurs by 18-24 months: they begin to pronounce words and express their thoughts no less clearly than children with a normal speech delay. (Compensation for long periods of silence: once these children begin to speak, they do not stop talking for days.)
- When can we talk about a child’s mental retardation?
This can be said when the child does not fulfill several minimal conditions: if at the age of two the child does not yet pronounce three words and cannot point to his mother, father or grandparents, as well as 3-4 objects in the room; he cannot sit up and stand up on his own; if contact with the outside world is so weak that the child cannot distinguish a kind word from a categorical "no!"; if the child does not follow with his eyes objects located or moved to the side of him and does not try to grab them; if during the game of "cuckoo" or "horned goat" he does not experience a feeling of "expectation"; if during feeding he does not establish any contact between him and the person feeding him; if the child normally accepts only liquid food.
However, the final verdict on the presence or absence of mental retardation is made by a psychiatrist.