Many parents are overwhelmed by anxiety that their child has not yet begun to speak. As a rule, these fears turn out to be unfounded, since at one point the baby becomes an active participant in quite meaningful dialogues.
Remember that there is no single age indicator for the appearance of a child's speech. This phenomenon is individual in nature, and it is not at all scary if a friend's nine-month-old son has long been calling his loved ones expressive "ma", "pa", "ba", and your one-year-old baby is stubbornly silent. It is considered normal if a child at the age of one speaks several words - from two to ten. But very often babies under two years old speak little, operating in communication with loved ones babbling, or even prefer to be silent altogether. The development of speech in children has two components: active, or pronouncing words and sentences, and passive - understanding words. Physiologically, it is so that passive speech develops much faster. Therefore, if your baby listens to you with obvious interest, quickly understands everything you say to him, and also fulfills simple requests addressed to him, you have no reason to worry, since the child's speech development proceeds normally. Even if a child is stubbornly silent until the age of two, this does not mean that he has guaranteed problems with speech in the future. Very often, such children begin to speak unexpectedly, and immediately in correctly constructed long sentences. In addition, it has been noticed that “silent people” often pronounce words more clearly than their peers who spoke early and overtake them in speech development. However, if you are still worried about the problem of your baby's silence, you can help him to speak as soon as possible. A useful exercise is looking at the objects around you with your child and commenting on what you see. For example: “Look, what a beautiful kitty! What a fluffy tail she has! And what protruding ears! " etc. More often accompany your own and the child's actions with comments, ask the kid to bring you a certain toy or to perform another task that is within his power. Read fairy tales and poems with the children, pause, encouraging the kid to finish a well-known rhymed line himself. Finger games are a good help in the development of a child's speech, for example, "Magpie-white-sided", "Fingers in the forest", etc. Consider the fact that speech that a child hears from a TV or computer does not help in speech development and often gives the opposite effect. It is worth showing serious concern if a baby at the age of three cannot express his feelings and needs in intelligible simple sentences, and only those closest can understand his babbling. In such a situation, you should seek the advice of a specialist.
