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Show The following is ont of a series of articles written by members of the Utah State Medical Association and Published in cooperation with your local newspaper. These articles are scheduled to appear every other week throughout the year in an effort to better acquaint you with problems of health, and drr ned to improve the well-being of the people of Utah SPEECH DIFFICULTIES IN CHILDREN In children, difficulties in speech may arise at the time of the initial iCi'.rnin of language or may arise several years after the child has begun to use spoken language. Then. i..:iy be disorders in the articulation of sounds, in the pitch Jr timbre of the voice, in the free flowing rhythm of the words which are used, or slowness in the beginning begin-ning of speech. The reasons for these problems are multiple and varied. Sometimes there is a physical factor, behind them, such as defective hearing, growths or infections of the nose or throat, or structural abnormali-tK abnormali-tK The question of organic disorder dis-order should always be explored and corrected as fai as possible when a child is having trouble learning to speak intelligibly. Severe illness, and especially illness involving the throat or mouth, experienced ex-perienced at the time when the child would ordinarily be learning to talk can have a very discouraging discourag-ing effect on the development of speech. It is also true that attitudes atti-tudes of parents such as encouraging encourag-ing "baby talk", anticipating the child's needs without encouraging him to use words, not allowing him the very essential period of infant "babbling", or insisting that he use long words or connected words before he is ready, can have an adverse effect. If the child can c, , what he needs without intelligible intelligi-ble speech, or if. on the other hand, too much is expected of him in the way of speech, he is unwilling un-willing to try. Attempts to change a child from the lef: to the right hand may cause difficult, in speaking too. The part of the brain which controls con-trols or.r choice of hands is the same area of the brain which controls con-trols our speech. Inasmuch we do nt learn all of our letters at the same time, parents should not be discouraged if theii child has not learned all of his more difficult letter? such as "S", "L". or "R" by the ''"me he enters school. By far the most common of speech problems is that of stuttering stutt-ering or stammering. The causes of stuttering are multiple and not easily discovered without intensive study. Most human beings will, at times when they are flooded with excitement oi othei' strong emotions, emo-tions, have periods when they have difficulty manipulating their speech. Especially is this, true of children whoso mastery of speech is still precarious at best. Parental attitudes play a big part in determining deter-mining whether this remains an occasional thing or develops into a patterning of response that becomes be-comes a source of continuing pain and embarrassment to the ' child. If the parent reacts with impatience, im-patience, annoyance, or shame to his child's stuttering or if the parent overprotects his child by prompting, substituting words, speaking for him, or by avoiding situations where he is required to speak, the child will accept what he considers to be his parent's estimate of himself as a person with a shameful defect which must be hidden awajr and consequently his stuttering will become worse. Early stuttering should be handled in a matter-of-fact and unemotional way with no issue being made of it whatever. At the same time, since emotions play a great role in stuttering, the child should be relieved of as much emotional stress as possible. After the stuttering has continued to the point where the child develops secondary ways of controlling it by spasms, head jerks or other devices it becomes very difficult to treat. Unfortunately, the emotional emo-tional problems behind the stuttering stutter-ing are then increased by the social penalities arising from the stuttering itself. Speech therapy ander psychiatric treatment becomes be-comes quite essential ot this point. |