Is it okay to ignore the fact that boys start talking later than girls?

Author: Xiong Tingting Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Reviewer: Hao Yan, Chief Physician of Tongji Hospital affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Many parents believe that girls have better language skills than boys and start speaking earlier than boys. Parents often say, "Boys generally speak late," and some even believe that delayed language development in boys is normal. In fact, these are all misunderstandings of parents.

The statement that "boys start speaking later than girls" is not true because large-scale surveys have found that there are no significant differences between boys and girls in early language development milestones.

Generally speaking, the speed of language development is not very different between genders. The real factors that affect language ability may be the child's own physiological and psychological problems, education methods, environmental factors and other factors. Although there are some differences between boys and girls in terms of gender, there is no obvious difference in language development ability. Both follow the law of development. Therefore, if we find that the child is "late in speaking", we should pay more attention to the law of language development and give the child a good language guidance. Let's take a look at the law of language development of normal children!

Copyright images are not authorized for reproduction

Under normal circumstances, babies aged 0 to 3 months can make "cooing" sounds and various meaningless sounds; babies aged 3 to 6 months can babble and laugh; babies aged 6 to 9 months can make "babamama" sounds; babies aged 9 to 12 months can usually consciously pronounce the sound of a word and call "dad" and "mom"; babies aged 12 to 18 months can say about 15 words; babies aged 18 to 24 months have a vocabulary of 50 words, can repeat the last two words of a sentence, and begin to say phrases; children aged 2 to 3 years old can say simple sentences of 3 to 4 words; children aged 3 to 4 years old can use complete sentences of more than 3 to 4 words; children aged 4 to 5 years old can use sentences with more complex grammatical structures. Of course, language is a complex system. The above-mentioned aspects belong to language expression. In addition, it also includes language understanding. Different age groups have different levels of understanding of language.

Children's language learning ability is a treasure given by nature. From watching adults' mouth shapes to suddenly speaking, this process is the key period of language preparation. 0 to 3 years old is the fastest period of brain development, and it is also the most important and critical period for children to learn language. There are individual differences in children's language development. Some children may speak later, but their language comprehension, language application and learning ability are similar to those of children of the same age. It is also possible that they can catch up with other children after language expression. This situation belongs to individual differences.

If a child is over 2 years old and has obvious language delay or lag behind other children of the same age, parents should not take it lightly or take chances. They should take their children to a regular hospital for examination as soon as possible to avoid missing the opportunity for treatment. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the development and learning of children's language and pay attention to their early language development. This is a compulsory course for every family and every parent. Regardless of whether the child who speaks late is a boy or a girl, early evaluation is required to detect the disease and early intervention.