Why Doesn’t My Child Repeat The Words?
Why doesn’t my child repeat the words? That is one of the questions parents ask the most. Language is a process that is gradually acquired during childhood. Children learn their first words by imitating adult speech and gestures, but these do not have the same meaning for a five-year-old as for an adult.
Thus, for the little one who begins to speak, the words are linked to the context and generalizes those words to similar contexts. For example, call all men with beards “dad”.
In this sense, the word does not have the independence of the context that adult words have. Children first learn words as signs rather than linguistic signs. That is, at the beginning the words represent for the little one something that is part of the object. Following Vygotsky, this would be a characteristic of primitive linguistic consciousness.
In the development of language, many parents try to accompany their child during the process, stimulating the emission of certain words. But what if your child doesn’t repeat the words? Why it happens? We tell you which are the 5 most frequent reasons.
Why doesn’t my child repeat the words?
First of all, we must be clear, as mothers and fathers, that the objective in these cases will not be that the little one repeats by repeating, that is, that he repeats words like a parrot. The objective will be to stimulate certain words and create situations in which the child must use them.
In other words (forgive the redundancy): we do not want the little one to repeat, but to broadcast. There are different reasons that respond to the question that heads the section: “my son does not repeat the words” . Beatriz Maya, speech therapist and special education teacher, suggests that some of the most common causes that explain why your child does not repeat the words are the following.
Not ready yet
At the evolutionary level, if our child has not yet reached enough maturity to emit certain words (or for language in general), he will not be able to repeat the words that we so desire. Thus, we must first analyze in which evolutionary phase it is and whether it “corresponds” or not, by age and moment, to speak.
You don’t repeat the words because you don’t need to
Another possible cause is that, at the moment, you are not needing it. That is, the words that we are trying to teach you to repeat are not needed in your day to day or in your usual contexts. This means that, for X reasons, they are not functional for him and, therefore, he does not emit them.
Don’t know the word
Another possible cause that our son does not repeat the words in question is that he simply does not know them yet. This is because in our day to day we use many words, most of them new to him. Let’s keep in mind that he is still learning. Thus, it may happen that our child does not know what word to use to refer to the objective that he is pointing to or in which he is interested at that moment.
He does not repeat the words because he is not interested
It may also be that the words that we are trying to stimulate in your language, the ones that we want you to say, are not related to your interests. That is, you are not directly interested in them and, therefore, do not make the effort to repeat them.
We don’t give you a choice
Finally, another possible explanation is that it is not directly necessary. In what sense? In the sense that, consciously or unconsciously, we try to fill in all his silences or we always give him what he needs through his signaling, we do not stimulate words because we understand him in other ways, etc.
It is not a question here that it is our fault, but rather that we become aware that what we do can interfere with the acquisition of these new words.
The evolution of language in childhood
We have known what are some of the reasons that would explain why our son does not repeat the words that we try to teach him. However, to discover what cause explains the behavior of the child, it will be convenient that we know what normal language development is like in children at a normative level.
So, how is the evolution of language in childhood? When are children supposed to start talking? We are going to see the most prominent phases below.
But first of all we must be clear that in the first semester of life the sounds of the child are universal. Later, between 6 and 12 months (second semester), the sounds of the mother tongue appear.
How is the language according to age?
If we divide the stages by age, we find that during the first 2 months of life babies make very high-pitched sounds. In the third month, you begin to emit the behaviors of saying “garlic” . From 4 to 5 months, they produce consonant and vowel-like sounds in isolation and occasionally a combination of consonant and vowel.
From the second semester of life, that is, between 6 and 9 months, the stage is characterized by reduplicative babbling, which consists of forming repeated and long chains of syllables (consonant + vowel). Between 9 and 12 months, along with the consonant + vowel syllables, shorter strings appear, with other syllabic structures (vowel + consonant + vowel; consonant + consonant + vowel, etc.).
How many words do children say according to their age?
The first word appears around the first year of life, in a period called “holophrase” (when they use a word to refer to a whole sentence). At 2 years of age they already begin to emit two words together to emit a sentence, and at 3 years of age their language already begins to resemble that of an adult.
Regarding the vocabulary of the child, it is known that from 16-18 months there is a very rapid increase in the number of words produced. By the age of 2 and a half, the child’s vocabulary is made up of around 500 words, and 6 months later it has doubled.
At 4 years of age, if they are normative children, that is, if there is no developmental disorder or other problem, they have already acquired adult speech.
In short, we hope we have resolved all the doubts about why your child does not repeat the words. However, in the event that more arise, go to a specialist, he will know better than anyone how to advise you in this regard.
