Diagnosis and treatment
Stuttering is diagnosed by a team of doctors - a therapist, a neurologist, a speech therapist, and a psychologist. It is necessary to identify the original cause of the speech disorder.
Algorithm for diagnosing psychological stuttering (what people pay attention to):
- medical history;
- genetic factor;
- timely development of basic skills in the first year of life;
- starting point - at what time and under what circumstances it first appeared;
- frequency of seizures;
- features of speech development;
- accompanying deviations in health and development.
Additional examinations are prescribed by an otolaryngologist to evaluate phonemic hearing.
The neurologist recommends:
- EEG;
- rheoencephalogram;
- MRI of the head and cervical spine.
The results of these studies will confirm or exclude the cause of the speech defect as a result of diseases of the cortex and membranes of the brain, the central nervous system.
Based on the results of the research, the speech therapist describes the form, degree, and nature of the seizures. Eliminates tachylalia, dysarthria, and stumbling speech in the patient. Afterwards, the specialist prescribes one of the individual correction schemes. The prognosis is favorable: already during the first year of complex treatment, a lasting result is observed if all measures and recommendations are followed.
ethnoscience
Occasionally, experts may recommend preventing a lisp in a child using traditional methods. These are infusions of sedative herbs. You can collect them in your garden or buy them ready-made at any pharmacy and steam them.
You can relieve tension by:
- dry mint;
- motherwort;
- nettle;
- chamomile.
When a baby has a lisp, loved ones should understand that gargling with herbal decoctions and applying honey lotions to the tongue cannot relieve the child of such a complex change in speech. This is an aid to the main treatment. In this situation, lessons in the form of games will bring good results.
Exercise for breathing
Breathing exercises, which are first shown by a specialized doctor, will help relieve your baby of a lisp, after which parents can work with the child at home. The technique of A. N. Strelnikova is often used. Its essence is the development of correct breathing in case of speech defects.
This technique is suitable for children of any age. What it consists of: breathing exercises combine short and sudden inhalation with gestures. The movement of different parts of the body stimulates the flow of oxygen to the tissues.
Pump
The baby stands, arms down, taking a short and sudden breath, leans forward. The back turns into an arch, the head drops down. After which it quietly returns to its original position, exhaling through the nose or mouth.
The exercise consists of 8 breaths, 13 repetitions, interval - 5 seconds. It must be taken into account that the child may not be able to immediately master such a volume. You need to start small and strive for more. If your child suddenly develops dizziness or pain in the lumbar region, then have him continue the exercise while sitting.
This breathing exercise has a great effect on various organs, but there are also contraindications:
- bruises or head injuries;
- high blood pressure;
- problems with the spine;
- poor eyesight;
- stones in the kidneys;
- the appearance of acute diseases.
Hug your shoulders
This activity must be performed in a standing position. The arms are bent, the hands are raised up. The baby should bring them towards each other, taking a short and loud breath.
He should hug his shoulders with his hands, his elbows pressed to his chest. If everything was done correctly, then the hands will be located parallel to each other, but if they are crosswise, then this is incorrect. When the child exhales (through the nose or mouth), the hands move apart and you can see a figure - a square. The number of breaths is 7 or 8, repeated 12 times and the interval is 5-10 seconds.
Contraindications:
- heart problems;
- other serious illnesses.
Prevention
You can protect yourself from lisps in teenagers with the help of special preventive manipulations. The atmosphere in the family and home is very important. It should be pleasant and cozy. Eliminate all quarrels between parents. Do not let your child watch scary films or cartoons. If your baby is afraid to be alone in the dark, buy him a night light.
It is necessary to surround the baby with care and love, but to know the limits in parental and pedagogical education, not to pamper, but not to infringe. A mother should take care of herself during pregnancy, try not to get sick and listen to her doctor. And teachers in kindergarten and school must adhere to ethics and tact in communicating with different children.
Drug therapy
Anti-lisp medications will be recommended only for complex mental disorders. To a large extent, these are medications against seizures (neuroleptics), for sedation or sleeping pills (in very rare situations). These are medications such as:
- Tazepam;
- Magne B6;
- Phenibut;
- Senorm;
- Citral;
- Elenium.
Homeopathy is also used for lisps in children. It is a strong sedative. These include:
- Notta;
- Baby Ced;
- Leovit;
- Dormikind.
You should not buy anti-lisp medications for children without a doctor’s recommendation. It happens that the nature of speech disorders is not at all in the nerve endings, then such treatment will aggravate the disease. Only a neurologist or psychotherapist can prescribe the correct treatment.
Causes of stuttering
There is no single reason that causes stuttering. Several factors can influence the development of this disorder. The likelihood of developing a speech disorder or not depends, for example, on the gender of the person - men suffer from it more often than women.
In children, speech impairment can be caused by severe fear or excitement. When stressed, children will begin to stutter or stop speaking altogether. In some cases, such a disorder passes after some time and leaves no trace; in others, it can accompany a person into adult life. Improper upbringing by authoritarian parents, who often shout and punish the child, can also cause the child to develop speech disorders.
The example of adults can be another factor leading to childhood stuttering. If there is a stutterer in the family, the child can learn to speak in the same way and consider this pronunciation to be correct. The likelihood of developing speech defects in such children is further increased due to a genetic predisposition to this type of disorder.
Stuttering in children can also have physiological causes. The reason for the development of the disease can be congenital pathologies of the nervous system, physical injuries to the head, oxygen starvation of the brain during childbirth.
Insecure and insecure teenagers can suffer from speech disorders ; stuttering can be caused by their inability to communicate with people, the need to come into contact with them, and make friends.
In adults, the cause may be psychological trauma suffered at different periods of life, severe or prolonged stress, troubles in the family or at work, negative events that left a deep mark on the soul.
The state of a person’s nervous system also greatly influences the development of stuttering. In people with an unstable, labile psyche, overly emotional and impressionable, any psychological disorders, including this one, develop much more often than in people with a strong and balanced type of nervous system.
Some phobias, for example, social phobia, can also be an excellent basis for the development of stuttering . Affected people may stutter if they are forced to speak in public, work in a large group, or engage in activities that involve communicating with a large number of people.
Be that as it may, stuttering can be cured if you consult a qualified doctor, and the sooner this is done, the more successful the treatment will be.
Massage
To cure your baby's lisp, take a massage course from a specialized doctor. It is not recommended to do a massage at home, since it can injure the trachea or muscles. Only a knowledgeable massage therapist for children who specializes in the treatment of speech defects can guarantee successful completion of the course.
Fundamental principles of massage:
- measured and smooth pace of communication;
- creating a favorable environment for the baby;
- turning on a calm melody;
- warming hands of a massage therapist.
The session is done in the correct sequence in the following places:
- neck;
- upper shoulder girdle;
- facial muscles;
- lips;
- throat.
The main goal of therapy is to relax all muscle groups. The child is in tension every day. The massage course consists of 12 sessions. If there is a need, you can repeat the course after 14 days.
To make the lisp correction and massage course even more effective, experts may recommend adding medications.
Games
In order to support the tasks given by the speech therapist, parents should play games with the child at home. This technique is designed for boys and girls of preschool age. The specialist who is treating your child will tell you which specific games to use. He knows all the features of his speech and will be able to select the best options. Below are examples of the most famous games.
Problematic artist
The kid looks at the drawings and says what discrepancies there are with reality: for example, autumn is drawn, but the leaves are green. The main thing is the spirit of competition: he must say it faster than others.
Farm
The child pronounces animal sounds after the specialist. He starts small, smoothly, and most importantly, correctly. When he succeeds, the rhythm needs to be made faster.
Art
In the case where the child has drawing skills, you can ask him to draw and at the same time talk about what you are depicting. Children like to draw, and against the background of this, the stressful state goes away, and then it becomes easier to speak. If the child does not like this activity, it could be something else: assembling construction sets, modeling, singing.
Exercise in the form of games with children who have a lisp at home improves the correct pronunciation of words and character in difficult situations. This is a specific and very important foundation for transferring achieved skills from the game to the real world. The baby tries to communicate, this makes it possible to understand how to behave correctly in society.
Treatment of lisp in children
Self-medication is the correction of speech disorders in 2-3 areas. In this situation, not only the help of a specialized specialist, but also special conditions would be appropriate. Often it helps to practice at home, in your own home, so that the parents take charge of the organization themselves.
Qualified help
A neurologist and psychologist determine the root causes of the deviation, and a psychotherapist prescribes medications if necessary. Only a speech pathologist-speech therapist corrects the main and accompanying speech disorders and its functions using a specific regulatory plan, which is selected for each individual individually.
There are specialized speech therapist lessons. They help make children's speech smoother and improve breathing during communication. After which the baby copes with the lisp and can communicate at any pace.
Lessons will bear fruit only when the environment becomes easy and relaxed for him.
Fun swing
The speech therapist and the baby slowly walk in a circle and with each step they say the following words:
“Opa-opa-opa-pa-pa, tatati-tati-tata.”
Conductor
The speech therapist actively waves his arms. With each swing, the baby says melodiously vowels, phrases - whatever he wants.
Funny chickens
The baby jumps from one leg to the other, copying the behavior of the chicken, and constantly saying the following words:
“Clap-clap-clap! Up-tap-tap, Wh-if-af.”
Mishutka
The speech therapist reproduces the words as a melody, but smoothly. For every vowel sound, the baby needs to clap. Little by little the task becomes harder: you need to stomp your foot.
Artist
In this exercise, the child reads a poem that he knows by heart, melodiously, like a song, to classical or symphonic music. The point is to get into the rhythm and tempo. When the child completes this exercise on o, then you can begin a more complex poem.
But correcting a lisp in children before school cannot be done with just fun exercises from a speech therapist. This is both a psychological and physiological trauma, and it also needs the support of some more specialized doctors during recovery.
Treatment methods
For stuttering, the following is prescribed:
- sedatives;
- antispasmodics (if laryngeal spasm is present);
- general strengthening vitamins;
- B vitamins;
- omega acids.
In addition to drug therapy, after the examination, classes with a speech therapist-defectologist, relaxing massage of the collar area, and exercise therapy are recommended. They also recommend visiting a family psychologist to normalize the situation in the family if frequent conflicts have become a provoking factor for stuttering in a child.
With an integrated approach to the problem, logoneurosis can be eliminated within a year and a half. It is important to understand the danger of relapse of the disorder and surround the child with warmth and care.
Forecasts
Every parent is concerned about their child's lisp and whether it can be cured.
In order to know what the prognosis will be, you need to take into account many indicators (how old the patient is, what stage of the disease), but each case is special:
- when treatment was provided on time, eliminating the lisp will be easy;
- If speech disorders are discovered that began in childhood, then solving such a problem will be much more difficult.
Recovery also depends on the form of lisp and stuttering. Convulsions that occur during breathing are easier and faster to cure than tonic ones.
A lisp can be dealt with without problems between the ages of 3 and 5, but after 12 years, correcting speech will take quite a long time.
The important thing is that family and friends should know how to behave when a child has a lisp: provide him with the necessary help, invite a speech therapist, create a pleasant and cozy environment around him. And the best thing is to make sure that this pathology does not appear at all, so you need to engage in prevention.
