It never fails to amaze me that learning to speak properly is one of the greatest steps in a child's development - or one of his most severe hurdles. Here are some practical steps you can take to avoid speech problems in your child and to help him develop a pleasant voice and an articulate way of speaking.
What makes your David speak? It's a good question. Speech doesn't just happen. It is no sudden miracle springing out of sheer good luck, but the result of a fascinating process of development.
David's speech will be influenced by his intelligence, his hearing, his sight, his health by how happy he is during he first five years of life. It will also be influenced by his control of his muscles and his co-ordination, by how well he learns to breathe and to use his speech organs - tongue, teeth, lips, gums, larynx and others. His speech will also be influenced simply by his innate tempo for maturing.
You will know that he has a good working voice if with it he can easily carry on the business of normal daily living, if he can easily be heard and his voice is usually free of either huskiness or shrillness, if he does not speak through his nose.
To make himself heard David must have carrying power, which means he must make good use of volume. Remember that volume in a human voice is very similar to volume in your radio. Turn your radio's volume up or down and you get more or less sound. So, too, should David learn to give more emphasis to important ideas than to unimportant ones. His voice should be flexible enough to express the differences he has learned to sense.
Through suitable pitch variety, David makes his voice interesting, lets it become a sensitive reflection of his moods and thoughts. A voice that has flexible pitch is never dull.
David's speech shows a good sense of tempo. Some children naturally speak fast, others naturally speak slowly. The natural rate, provided it isn't too fast or too slow (and you'll know whether it is either of these by the reaction of other people and by your own reaction) should, of course, not be interfered with. David learns to suit his timing to the occasion - speeding up or slowing down as the occasion demands. He learns to give emphasis to what he says by making use of varying pitch, by "framing" the important point. To frame it he must say the important words either faster or more slowly than he spoke what preceded these words and what will follow them.
Good volume, pitch and tempo go to make good tone quality. So do vibrancy and reasonance. If David's tone quality is good, if his voice is vibrant and reasonant, he impresses people as a vital, vivid child. But these things cannot be taught David. They must come naturally in imitation of the example you yourself set. How David speaks is therefore not preordained. It is largely a matter of his environment.
Six ways to help your child speak better
In the beginning you are the child's world, so it is you who must fashion the child's speech. You fashion it by what you do and by what you don't do, and by what you are.
David will speak earlier and better - better all his life - if you will do certain things.
1. Stimulate him to talk from the very beginning of his life. (but only when he is in the mood for such stimulation!)
2. See that he has a motive for speaking. In his preverbal period, he will ask for things by gestures, by crying or by babbling. But as he shows that he is ready to speak and after he not merely speaks his first word or his second or third but shows signs of a growing vocabulary, let him know that his preverbal techniques for asking will no longer serve their old purpose. Give him what he wants only after he has asked for it - no matter how clumsy the asking may be. And don't anticipate his wishes. If he gets what he wants without asking, he may not bother to ask.
3. Fill his world with meaning. To do this give him many opportunities to see the connection between a thing or an experience and the word for that thing or that experience.
4. Fill his world with interest, excitement and vitality. Make his environment an alive one by talking to him from his very first days. Sounds and words are a form of play, one of the most exciting games of childhood. As soon as your child can appreciate this fact, he will readily enter into the spirit of sound play to which you have introduced him.
5. As he grows a little older and is able to join you at meals, make a point of including him in family conversations.
6. You must let David know that you love him. His good speech thrives on this expression of your love. Mothers start influencing the child's speech from the day he or she is born. Mother's arms, the tone of her voice, the aura of warmth that she creates - these affect the way the child breathes and eats. They also affect the way he makes sounds and learns to speak.
LOVE MAKES A DIFFERENCE
How important is this first mother-child closeness can be seen in children who have been wholly or partially denied it. Twins, for instance, each of who gets only half of his mother's attention, are practically always late in speaking. And once they begin, they talk imperfectly for a long time.
For the opposite reason, the only child is very frequently precocious in speech development - he receives love and attention to his heart's and his speech's content. He not only enjoys more of his mother's undivided attention when he is an infant, but he is spared having this attention eclipsed by the arrival of a brother or sister.
The arrival of a brother or sister may have a marked effect upon some children's speech. When they receive the newcomer with extreme hostility and jealousy, these emotions may result in a speech defect.
But the child who spends a barren childhood in an orphanage is the best example of what a loveless childhood can do in a child's speech. The speech of children in institutions typically develops very slowly and with marked defects. Neglect and the absence of love retard in every phase of his development. But nowhere will the effects be as great and as apparent as in the child's speech.
Speech thrives when the child feels loved.
Dora Kok
