Is hearing loss the cause of a child's lisp?

The article was consulted with Specialist Doctor I Nguyen Thi My Linh - Neonatologist - Department of Pediatrics - Neonatology - Vinmec Danang International General Hospital.

Children's lisp can be caused by many causes such as abnormal lip and palate structure, behavioral disorders, imitating people around... But there is one cause that many parents Or even experts are often overlooked because of poor hearing.

We often use the word "slurred speech" to refer to children with speech pronunciation disorders (English is "Speech sound disorder"). This condition is quite common in children, especially when they begin to learn to speak.
Many children up to the age of 6 -7 years old still have lisp, incorrect pronunciation causes many serious consequences, typically:
Affecting children's psyche. Children with lisp are easily self-deprecating and depressed when they find themselves unable to pronounce the same words as everyone else. Children have difficulty communicating with people around, leading to increasingly shy to speak, afraid to express opinions. Affects the ability to learn in class (especially reading and writing skills).

When seeing that their child has a lisp, the first thing parents need to do is find out the reason why the child is slurred. There are many reasons why children stutter, for example:
Children speak according to their own preferences. Children do not yet know how to use the organs of pronunciation fluently. Due to the influence of people around, children imitate wrong speech, wrong pronunciation. Children suffering from physical injuries such as cleft lip and palate, cleft palate, malformation of the vocal tract, short tongue brake... Some children with speech disorders may also be the result of behavioral disorders and some diseases such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome. In addition to the above factors, there is another factor that very few people think about, which is the child's ability to hear sounds. In fact, it is estimated that 1 out of every 10 pediatric patients who come to the clinic for lisp status will have 1 child slurred speech due to hearing loss. As a result, children who do not hear well, have hearing loss, often will not hear enough vocabulary to fully develop their speaking ability.

Lying is just a language defect that does not affect a child's life, but it is a major obstacle to their development and integration into the community. The worrying thing is that many parents are still subjective when they see a child stuttering, thinking that no matter what, the child will gradually correct himself, but skip the "golden" time to take the child for an audiometric test.
Many speech therapists believe that, as soon as the children show signs of slurred speech, the family should take the initiative to take the child for a hearing test and then go to other specialties such as odonto-stomatology, mental illness to find out. Find out the exact cause... Depending on the cause, a child who stutters will be examined by a doctor and given instructions on how to intervene and handle it appropriately.
When it is certain that the child's lisp is caused by hearing loss, the child may be given a hearing aid, combining speaking practice and gradually correcting the lisp. For more severe cases of hearing loss, children may be considered for cochlear implant surgery to improve hearing.
In general, parents need early intervention and treatment for children with lisp, especially with children of preschool age so that children can enter grade 1 with clearer speech and pronunciation.
When a child shows signs of slurred speech, the child should be taken to a pediatric psychiatry facility or a mental health facility with a pediatric psychiatry specialty for an in-depth examination. Currently, Vinmec is one of the few hospitals that has a team of highly trained psychiatrists, including in the field of Pediatric Psychiatry, who will examine, evaluate and guide interventions for children with mental health problems. topic of language development. Doctors will use the Denver scale to assess the child's general development, autism assessment scales (if needed), dental exam, ENT exam, EEG or brain imaging (if needed). needed) to comprehensively assess the child's lisp problem in order to provide an appropriate diagnosis and intervention strategy.