3 Most Important Questions Regarding Children Speech Therapy

Are you worried about your child's speech difficulties? See the answers for top 3 questions concerning speech defects.

1. Do many children have speech problems?It is estimated by national authorities that about ten percent of school children have speech problems. To put it another way, about ten children out of one hundred need help in acquiring acceptable standards of speaking.

About half of these (five out of one hundred) have speech problems or defects of such severity that it interferes seriously with their school progress and social adjustment.

2. Isn't that a surprisingly large number?

No, not when you consider the complexity of speaking. To describe what the brain, nerves, and muscles must do in order to produce the single sound of "p" requires ten to twelve pages in the average sized textbook.

We don't expect children to become concert violinists without expert teaching. Yet speaking is much more complex than the playing of a violin. The surprising fact is that so many children learn to talk adequately without any help except what the family provides.

3. What is a speech defect?

Quite a wide range of speaking patterns is considered just "normal." It's only when it differs significantly from the way others speak in the same community of the same age and sex that we may say it's is defective.

The two purposes of speaking are to satisfy the need for self-expression and to provide meaningful communication. When it cannot adequately serve these purposes, it's defective.

Not all speech differences are defects. To be called a "defect," the "difference" must be great enough to call attention to itself or to interfere with communication.

Seldom is a young child aware of his differences. But when he does become aware of the fact that the way he speaks is different, he may become maladjusted.

Some children with defective speech find that it is easier to refuse to talk than to do their best at expressing themselves only to be teased and humiliated.

Such withdrawn behavior interferes with progress in school and with social development. Other children react to teasing about the way they speak by becoming overly aggressive, resentful, antagonistic. Sometimes the maladjustment is the most serious aspect of the speech problem.

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