A speech and language therapist is a professional who deals with pathological conditions that may occur after birth, that is, throughout a person's life related to communication, language and speech. In other words, there may be mistakes, mistakes or some problems that start from the early period and come with birth, and there may be some problems that may arise in the future after the person develops his language and speaking skills, and he is a professional who deals with these.
What is the babbling period?
Speech follows a developmental process like other developmental stages. No child starts talking as soon as he is born. We start learning the language in the womb, and our receptive language begins to develop gradually after birth. We start making some sounds in the 6th month after birth, we call this the babbling period. Single-word outputs begin to form around the age of one. There is rapid development between the ages of 1-2, the number of words gradually increases. When we reach around 2 years old, we can say that we slowly start talking. We expect children to produce nearly 100 words around the age of two. Speech development is followed by adding grammatical issues to speech around the age of 2-3.
So when and in what situations should we consult the relevant specialist?
If the child does not look at the voice after birth or does not exhibit any behavior that will enable communication. If the child does not make eye contact, starts to speak in a way that only the mother can understand, or if there are incorrect pronunciations, interruptions or repetitions during speech, if we do not have any words yet around the age of 2, or if the child is developing behind his/her peers, he/she should see a speech and language therapist immediately.
Depending on their developmental period, if they have not gained the expected acceleration in their development, we recommend that they receive support training from a speech and language therapist.
What is the importance of early diagnosis?
Early diagnosis is of great importance for the efficiency and development of therapy. Families' immediate support, without making judgments such as "let's wait, his father also talked late, oh my dear
he can talk, he is still young", will increase the efficiency of the therapy and ensure that the therapy ends earlier.
Language and speech. Many factors may play a role as the cause of the problems. Before or during birth Organic problems such as communication difficulties, chromosomal problems, hearing loss, visual impairment, and intellectual disability may cause speech delay. Apart from this, lack of environmental stimuli, family attitudes, pervasive developmental disorder, autism, etc. Problems such as children with cleft lip and palate and factors affecting both the organic and developmental processes cause delays in speech development or cause speech problems.
Problems that will affect speech are dealt with by speech therapists, first within the framework of counseling and then with therapeutic interventions. .
Let's give some examples of speech problems...
For example, delayed language and speech; When you reach a certain age, you can express yourself through speech. You expect children to slowly start talking between 18-24 months. A delay here could be a problem. You may have problems with the pronunciation of some sounds, such as changing the location of the sounds, not being able to pronounce the sounds properly, or some kind of t-t-t ttstuttering problems called stuttering while speaking.
The quality of your voice may deteriorate, you may not be able to fully recover your breath, or you may have problems such as stuttering.
You may lose your voice in certain periods, problems may occur in the vocal cords due to some bad habits (nodules, polyps, etc.), there may be laryngeal diseases and even some problems leading to cancer.
In later periods, due to the damage to the speech center due to cerebral palsy. You may lose your ability to speak, your ability to read and write, of course, other than that, there are some developmental problems and individuals with special needs. Hearing impaired people, people with mental disabilities, spastics, etc. It is a professional group that provides support and training to these as well.
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