One of the key facets of personality development is speech. Interacting through speaking is an action a person has to do in their everyday life whether it's personal or professional. In everyday life, a good personality holds an important value. Speech therapy can help a child with difficulty in speech development at an early age and help adults having difficulty in speech by improving their communication skills.

What is speech therapy?

Speech and language therapy provides treatment, support, and care for adults and children who have difficulties with communication or with drinking, eating and swallowing. Speech-language therapists are allied health professionals. They work with parents, carers and other professionals such as occupational therapist, doctors, and teachers.

When to know if your child needs the attention of a speech therapist? Detecting early signs is important and here's how you can.

1) Your child rarely interacts socially: Between infancy and 3 months if your child is not interacting socially and smiling it could be a sign of speech or language disorder.

2) Your child makes only a few sounds and gestures: If your child is not speaking a few words, making gestures or is not responsive to you trying to interact between the age of a year to 18 months then it is most ikely that your child has speech or language disorder.

3) You are having difficulty understanding what your child is saying: Between the age of 18 months to 2 years your child's speech should be familiar to moms or dads. If you are finding it difficult to understand what your child is trying to say or if your child is having difficulties in what you are saying, you should consult an experienced speech therapist.

4) Combining words: By the age of 2, most children start combining words such as 'won't eat' or 'bye-bye' and try to express themselves. If your child is not being able to then you may want to consult an expert.

5) Repeating questions: if your child is repeatedly answering your questions with a part of the question, for example, if you ask your child, 'do you want to eat?' and your child replies saying 'you want to eat?' instead of nodding his head it could be an early sign of autism.

Benefits of speech therapy?

Children who have speech or language issues can benefit academically, socially and emotionally from speech therapy. This helps them speak more confidently, interact socially and less worried about speaking to others. It helps them learn to speak more clearly and confidently. Speech therapy can help Children suffering from dyslexia to hear and distinguish specific sounds in words. This helps in improving their reading comprehension skills.

For adults speech difficulties come in the form of dysarthria, stuttering, voice problems and articulation difficulties. Through speech therapy, adults can improve their speech and communication skills.

Facts to know:

(i) Speech therapy is not a quick fix. It may take months or even years of hard work.

(ii) Your involvement and support through practices at home and with your near ones could be the key factor for making speech therapy most effective.

Want to know more about speech therapy? Consult with our experienced and professional speech therapist at https://careist.in/speech-therapists-in-kolkata.html Your personal healthcare specialist at home.