Did you know that around 10% of preschool children are affected by a speech and language delay? If you have recently noticed that your child is not speaking as clearly as other kids, having trouble speaking, or not speaking at all, you might be concerned. There are a myriad of reasons that some kids will take a bit longer to talk than others and it might just be that they need to develop their speech on their own time.
But, we have put together this short guide to share the most common speech disorders that can affect kids. Read on to learn more.
Apraxia of Speech
This communication disorder affects the motor programming system for how we produce speech. Although, speech might come easily to many of us, speech production is actually difficult when it comes to forming sounds and sequencing.
Even when the person knows what they want to say they might experience a disruption in the brain where the signal is not sent to the muscle to produce the movement necessary to make the sound. This ends up leading to problems with articulation and intonation.
Luckily, Apraxia can be discovered during childhood and working with a speech therapist will improve putting the sounds together. You can learn more about speech language assessments here.
Stuttering
This is a more common speech disorder where the speech is interrupted by involuntary repetitions. This ends up causing prolonged sounds along with hesitation or pausing before speech.
Sometimes stuttering can occur from a brain trauma if a child or baby falls and hits their head really hard. It can also be a developmental issue where it starts early during speech acquisition. Although, no one really knows why stuttering occurs it is believed that it can be a genetic situation.
Research has shown that kids that have relatives that stutter are around 3X more likely to also develop stuttering.
Articulation Disorder
Another type of speech disorder is a speech sound disorder where a child has difficulty making certain sounds. The child might improperly alter sounds or omit certain sounds while speaking. This is pretty common in young children as they’re learning how to speak, but they tend to grow out of it after some time.
If they do not outgrow it and continue way past a certain age, then having their speech assessed is a good idea. They can evaluate if they need to have speech therapy to correct those sounds they are omitting or not enunciating.
Very commonly kids will not pronounce the S or R sound correctly, so they change rabbit to wabbit or bird to buhd.
Feeling Like a Pro When It Comes to Speech Disorders?
Now that you are familiar with common speech disorders today, you can evaluate how your child might be affected with their speech.
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