Dyslalia in children: forms and causes

What is dyslalia?

Stuttering, disturbances in pronunciation or articulation disturbances: all of this is understood as dyslalia. It occurs primarily in childhood. If your child has dyslalia, it uses certain sounds incorrectly, not at all, or mixes them up. The more sounds affected by the pronunciation disorder, the more incomprehensible your child’s speech will be. It can also lead to gross misunderstandings if, for example, the meaning of the word changes when a sound is mixed up or left out and, for example, the “head” becomes the “pot”.

forms of dyslalia

In general, dyslalia can be divided into two types:

• Phonological Disorder: This form is a language disorder in which certain sounds are omitted or replaced with other native sounds. Your child can form these sounds correctly on their own, but not use them according to the language-systematic rules. For example, the “Glocke” becomes the “Gocke” or the “Gabel” becomes the “Dabel”. Other manifestations can be, for example, the omission of unstressed syllables. “Tomato” simply becomes “Mate”. There are over 40 different variants of dyslalia that indicate a phonological disorder.
• Phonetic Disorder: This is a speech disorder, i.e. the dyslalia is due to motor difficulties in the area of ​​the speech tools. Your child cannot form certain sounds correctly, such as when lisping. Lisping, i.e. the incorrect pronunciation of the letter “S”, is called sigmatism in the technical language. If other letters are affected, the technical designation results from the respective Greek letter supplemented by the suffix “-ism”. For example, if the letter “L” is mispronounced, it is called Lambdacism, or if the “T” is mispronounced, it is called Taucism. A phonetic disorder can also manifest itself in the way that your child with dyslalia always replaces a certain sound with a completely different one, for example the “S” with a “T”.

In addition to these subdivisions, dyslalia is also categorized by severity. It depends on how many sounds are affected:

• Inconstant dyslalia: Your child sometimes mispronounces a sound.
• Inconsistent dyslalia: Your child replaces a sound with different sounds depending on the word.
• Partial dyslalia: 1-2 sounds are affected by the disorder. Your child’s language is still easy to understand.
• Multiple dyslalia: More than 2 sounds are affected by the disorder. Your child’s language is not so easy to understand.
• Universal Dyslalia: Most sounds are affected. Your child can hardly be understood, it utters almost exclusively vowels. This severe form of dyslalia is also known as ‘vocal language’ or ‘Hottentotism’.

Causes of Dyslalia

In most cases, dyslalia can be traced back to disturbances in perception and processing in the area of ​​the ears and eyes or disturbances in the tools of speech such as the muscles of the mouth. Genetic predisposition can also play a role in dyslalia. A sound can also cause problems for children if it does not occur in their mother tongue.

Treatment of dyslalia before starting school

Certain articulation difficulties in language development occur in many children. As long as your child’s vocabulary and grammar develops according to their age, they usually do not need medical treatment, but can receive appropriate support at home. In our special “Language development of your child” you will find helpful tips that you can use to help your child.

However, if your child is still making major mistakes in their pronunciation at the age of three and a half to four years, speech therapy treatment is necessary. However, due to the different possible manifestations of dyslalia, there is no general standardized therapy. This is much more individually tailored to your child. This speech therapy for dyscalculia should be successfully completed by the time the child starts school, so that the pronunciation disorder does not have a negative effect on the acquisition of written language.

So if your child is affected, it does not mean that they have to live with this fate. With proper and early treatment, it can overcome dyslalia.