What can be deviations in the mental development of a child?

The delay in mental development is not a sentence. Some types of deviations with appropriate treatment and a favorable environment in the family are correction until the diagnosis is completely canceled.

Stages of the mental development of the child

The stages of the child’s mental development are periods of growing up in which the child has new skills and properties that were not before.

Assessment of the mental development of children

• A child aged 2-3 months should be able to hold the head straight; fix the view on objects brought to the face; react to light, sound, touch; speak emotionally to the communication of parents
• At 1-2 years old, the child goes (independently or with the support of adults); expresses his needs with words; imitative abilities are pronounced; shows active interest in different subjects
• At 3 years old, the child knows well the purpose of household items (toothbrush, comb, mug, spoon) and knows how to use them; shows an active interest in interaction with adults; Interest in subjects is effective in nature - study with a specific goal; shows independence and perseverance; able to follow the speech instructions of adults (reproduce the simplest sequence of actions); seeks not only to listen, but also to inform adults of any information; shows interest in stories and pictures
  

  Periods of mental development of children

• At the age of 4-6 years, a violation of the child’s mental development has the following manifestations:
  • excessive motor activity, often meaningless
  • easily excite, manifestations of emotions are uncontrolled in nature
  • he can hardly understand the instructions of adults
  • cannot keep attention when completing tasks or compliance with the game conditions
  • more often needs adult help compared to peers
  • unable to play or speak quietly, experiences difficulties in games with peers
• a deviation from the norm at 5-6 years old is considered to be a clear advance of peers in development, especially when the child is clearly interested in only one area;
  At the age of 5-6, the “rollback” in the behavior and loss of previously well-mastered skills should alert: loss of interest in games, reducing communication, refusal to use household items

Help for children with mental retardation

The most important mental processes in children include the following components:

1. Memory
2. Thinking
3. Speech
4. Perception

Memory development in children

• In infancy, the memory is conditionally reflex in nature (picked up in his hands in the position of feeding-reflexively searches for the chest with his mouth). For six months, “recognition” begins - the child distinguishes familiar faces and objects, emotionally reacts to them
• By the end of the first year of life, “recalling” is connected when the baby is looking for an object that is asked to find him. In 2-3 years, the child remembers only what is of significant importance for him at the moment, quickly forgetting everything that falls out of sight
• Intentional memorization begins in preschool age along with the development of game skills, while the child best remembers visual images (pictures). Children of this age are easier to remember speech material if it carries a figurative and bright emotional character. Abstract concepts in preschool age are practically not absorbed. The child operates only with mechanical memory: reproduces exactly copying what he saw
• With the start of schooling at school under the influence of systematic classes, the development of memory quickly progresses, abstract types of memory appear: logical and abstract

Development of thinking in children

• The development of thinking is inextricably linked with the process of education and training. In the first years of life, thinking is very objective and connected with specific tasks: to assemble a pyramid, get a toy, bring a ball for the game
• With the development of speech, thinking acquires new qualities: the child can highlight the main, most striking physical property of the subject for perception: soft, hot, large, loud. Then logical connections are connected: “The girl cries \u003d the girl is sad”; "Mom put on boots \u003d mom goes outside"
• The thinking of a junior preschooler gradually changes from visual-effective (which I see, I’m talking about that), to a visual-figurative (I'm talking about what I imagine in the imagination). At the same time, younger preschoolers operate only with their own experience (I can talk about what I saw, touched myself)
• Senior preschoolers can go beyond their own experience and build assumptions about what they do not know, based on logical reasoning
• With the start of schooling at school, the ability to talk about abstract concepts increases more and more, children operate more freely with abstract objects and build logical connections between them

Speech development in a child

• The development of speech begins even in infancy: by showing voice reactions (crying, screaming, bucking), the child actively trains the speech apparatus for subsequent use
• For six months, the child begins to actively recognize and distinguish between sounds. By the end of the first year of life, a logical connection appears between certain sounds and objects: “meow-yu \u003d cat”, “tick-tak \u003d watch”
• The first meaningful words of the child are associated with the most popular objects and actions: mom, dad, give. At first, the child’s speech is passive: he perceives much more words than he can say
• In the process of communication, the child finds out that speech is a way to inform others about his needs. The higher the needs of the baby, the greater the supply of words he needs. He cannot describe complex actions in one word (give) or gesture (grab). To be understood, the child increases the vocabulary

• The first primitive sentences look like a simple set of words: mom, kitchen, porridge, eat. By the end of the younger age, the child masters the simplest grammatical rules for constructing speech, his proposals look more agreed: give a hat, let's go for a walk
• In younger preschool age, the rapid growth of vocabulary occurs, there is an active mastery of the rules of the language. The child masters the correct use of individual grammatical forms: prepositions (over, under, for, in front), modal verbs (I want, I can, I must), coordination of the number, kind and case
• At the same time, the child assimilates vocabulary and grammar exclusively in the form of accumulating experience in communication in their native language. As such, he does not know
• In older preschool age, the development of speech directly affects the development of thinking, memory, imagination and perception. Significant enrichment of the vocabulary occurs
• The child begins to try to analyze language rules, to control his own speech for compliance with these rules
• In school age, the mastery of written speech, reading is added to oral speech. Conscious mastery of the rules of the language, its wealth and diversity begins

Development of perception

• Perception is the knowledge of the world through the senses (taste, color, smell, species). At an early age, perception plays a major role in the mental development of the child. Through perception, the baby begins to study the world around
• The perception of the baby is reflex in nature. He perceives only what is connected with his main needs
• In early childhood, extraneous things can attract the attention of a child. He can operate with several objects, try to correlate them (fold together, live one in another), but he is not capable of their long -term study. He is not yet capable of visual assessment of objects, therefore it correlates them by trying on: connected, did not fit, connected it differently

• By the third year, the child is able to perceive different properties of things: warm, fluffy, green, sweet. He knows how to compare objects on a certain basis: round as a ball, soft as fluff. However, perception is still very fuzzy: for example, young children will not recognize a disguised upbred in the Snow Maiden. Or, when compiling cubes, he does not see a mistake if he put the dog’s head at the feet of the cow. They extract information about the subject through direct interaction with him: pick up, press, smell
• In preschool age, the child knows how to compare many objects with each other, ranking them according to a specific feature (large, more, the largest). He masters the concepts of “height”, “length”, “width”, “form”. He knows how to reproduce what he sees, in words or in the figure, in modeling, in application. It distinguishes not just colors, but their shades. It can study and describe the subject visually, and not just contacting it physically. Space is perceived not only regarding its body, but from different points of reference. The perception of people is also more complicated, and the assessment of internal qualities begins to prevail over external

The role of the game in the mental development of the child

The game in early childhood and preschool age is the most important and main instrument of the child’s mental development. Through the game activity, his training, education, self -education, the formation of the most important qualities of the individual occurs.

Games are divided into three main groups:

• The plot is role -Games in “House”, “Daughter-Mother”, “School”, “Hospital”, “Shop”. The role-playing games teach the child to communicate and interact with other people. By the behavior of the child in such games, one can judge the qualities of an emerging personality and take timely measures to correct them (aggression, violence). You can teach a child to be missing skills, instill a correct model of behavior in a particular situation
• Didactic - This is a playful training. The basis of didactic games is the need for analysis, comparison, reasoning and other mental actions. Didactic games include cubes, pyramids, designers, puzzles. Didactic games well develop attention, perseverance, the desire to achieve the result
• Mobile -“Cats-mouse”, “hide and seek”, “brook”, sports relay races. In addition to the physical activity necessary for the child in younger and preschool age, outdoor games develop memory (it is necessary to remember the rules or sequence of actions), the speed of the reaction, the ability to comply with the established rules

It is important that all three types of games are present in the child’s life, since they develop different sides of the child’s psyche.

Development of mental processes in children

• Each stage of development determines the volume of knowledge, skills and skills that the child should master. The norm is considered to be the correspondence of the level of development of the child to most children of his age. For example, the main task of the baby is to study his own physical capabilities. In early childhood, children actively master psychomotor skills (the ability to use a spatula, collect cubes, eat with a spoon)
• It is not easy to determine deviations in the development of the child. If several children grow in the family, the parent can evaluate the level of development of the child empirically, comparing the child with his brothers and sisters. If there is only one child in the family, understand how much he corresponds to peers in development is quite difficult
• In addition, within each age, there are subjective individual characteristics of the child, which makes the task of evaluating the development of even more difficult

Early diagnosis of the mental development of the child

The reasons why the child can lag behind in mental development can be divided into three groups:

• Prenatal - arising from the intrauterine development of the fetus due to genetic deviations, intrauterine infection, pathologies of pregnancy, mother smoking, drinking alcohol and narcotic substances during pregnancy
• Natal - arising during childbirth: entering the umbilical cord and subsequent asphyxia, the use of forceps during childbirth, other traumatic effects on the newborn
• Postnatal - postpartum circumstances that led to the defeat of the mental development of the child: complications on the diseases, deficiency of attention and emotional communication from adults in infancy, pedagogical neglect and lack of conditions for the development of functions and skills that determine the mental development of the baby

A violation of mental development is considered a disorder of psychomotor functions that occur with the negative effects of the listed factors on the brain.

To determine the presence of deviations in a child, it is necessary to consult narrow specialists: neuropathologist, psychologist, speech therapist, defectologist, and others. Only they can distinguish obvious deviations from age -related manifestations of character and prescribe appropriate correctional work.

Mental development of the child in preschool age

Most often, mental retardation is manifested in children with the beginning of visiting children's preschool institutions. The main types of mental retardation:

• Somatogenic - arising from serious diseases; outwardly manifests itself in the general weakening of the child, a decrease in endurance, increased excitability, or vice versa apathy, chronic overwork
• Cerebrailly-Asthenic - associated with organic brain damage; manifests itself as hyperactivity, excessive excitability, sudden and frequent mood swings
• Psychogenic - is a consequence of the social neglect of the child, a lack of education, occurs in children from dysfunctional families
• Constitutional - the reason is the underdevelopment of the frontal lobes of the brain; The main sign of such a lag is expressed by behavior that does not correspond to age; The interests, needs and skills of a preschooler remain at the level of 2-3-4-year-old children

Diagnosis of lag in mental development requires great caution, since sometimes the listed features can be associated with the characteristics of the character of a healthy baby: hyperactivity, unwillingness to comply with outsiders, natural isolation and the like.

It is important to understand that a delay in mental development is referred to as borderline deviations between normal development and mental retardation. Such a diagnosis indicates a child’s lag in development, which can be caught up, that is, the problem is temporary and, in most cases, eliminates with proper and timely correction.

Correction of mental retardation of a child

Correction of mental retardation in a child implies the integrated work of doctors, teachers and parents. It requires a long time and constant efforts of adults.

Particular attention when working with these children is paid to the nature of learning. Classes should be short in time, a frequent change of classes, maximum use of visual types of information presentation, frequent repetition of educational material is required.

A large role in the development of children with mental retardation is played by group and individual classes with psychologists, game forms and art therapy.
In some cases, correctional work is reinforced with drug treatment and physiotherapy.

Teaching children with mental retardation

According to the current practice, children with mental retardation do not need isolation and can attend a comprehensive school. However, it is important to remember that the result of training in such children will be lower than that of peers, and it can only be caught up with a complex approach, in the close interaction of teachers and parents.

Video: Help for children with mental retardation

Video: Correction of the mental development of the child through the game