Question
Is it normal for a four-year-old child not to speak? Has the child been checked at the hospital and found normal? What should be done?
Answer
Hello, parents should undergo relevant training. Some intellectually disabled children do not speak until they are 5 or 6 years old. How is the child’s intelligence? Please refer to the following: Language is the shell of thought and also a tool for people’s communication. Normal children are born with this ability to understand and speak, or rather, with this potential. At a certain age, with a little guidance, they can understand and speak. However, intellectually disabled children, due to brain damage or brain function defects, may have language disorders. The more severe the degree of intellectual disability, the more severe the language disorder. Moreover, language disorders are also the most difficult to correct. Language mainly includes three aspects: (1) pronunciation; (2) understanding, i.e., comprehension; (3) speaking and expressing. Sometimes, pronunciation is also considered part of expression. When training intellectually disabled children to speak, one must first observe the characteristics of their language. The degree of language disorder in intellectually disabled children can range from a lack of vocabulary and simple sentence structures to not being able to speak or understand at all. The following characteristics of language disorders are those observed in mild to moderate intellectually disabled children and do not include those in severely or profoundly disabled children: (1) The language development pattern of intellectually disabled children is different from that of normal children. Normal children usually start with babbling (producing sounds that are difficult to understand), then learn to understand, and finally learn to speak, with the basic process completed by around 3 to 4 years old; whereas intellectually disabled children often do not have any speech (they still cry), and as they grow older, under the “intensive education” (i.e., constantly talking to them) of parents, they can understand some everyday language but are unable to speak (mildly delayed children may say some words). Some intellectually disabled children do not start speaking until they are 5 to 6 years old. (2) Starting to speak at a later age requires more teaching time from adults. Generally, after intensive education, mildly delayed or