SPEECH THERAPY👇 Why do more and more children need SPEECH THERAPY?

In the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of children who show delays or difficulties in language development. Although the causes can be multiple and interdisciplinary, psychosomatic perspectives offer a broad framework of understanding, integrating the neurobiological, emotional, and relational factors that influence communication. Language is not just a cognitive skill, but a complex expression of the child’s internal state and the environment in which they develop.

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Verbal language develops optimally in a context of emotional safety. When a child is exposed to chronic stress, family tension, or an unpredictable environment, the nervous system activates survival mechanisms that inhibit higher functions, including verbal expression. Elevated cortisol and the hyperactivation of the sympathetic system reduce the child’s capacity to explore, to experience spontaneity, and to initiate communication.

In such contexts, language delay often represents an adaptive strategy: the body prioritizes internal regulation, not external expression. The child “saves” cognitive and emotional resources in order to manage the environment, rather than build linguistic skills.

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From a psychosomatic perspective, the throat area is associated with expression, assertion, and the transmission of needs. Children who grow up in environments where:

• emotional expression is discouraged,

• crying is stopped,

• anger is punished,

• “speaking” is perceived as disturbing,

may develop functional blockages in the verbal area. These manifest as language delays, articulation difficulties, stuttering, or verbal inhibition.

In such situations, the child implicitly learns that expression is associated with risk, and the body responds with tension in the throat, tongue, and jaw — tensions that interfere with the mechanisms necessary for clear speech.

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Language development depends not only on auditory exposure to words, but especially on reciprocal interaction with the adult. The child needs their emotions and gestures to be verbally mirrored in order to form the connections between experience, affect, and word. This “mirroring” process builds the neural architecture of language.

In families where the parent is overwhelmed, distracted, tired, or excessively absorbed by the digital environment, the quality of interactions decreases. The child receives more instructive language and less relational language, which leads to insufficient stimulation of the cortical areas responsible for communication.

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The mother’s emotional state during pregnancy has a direct impact on the maturation of the child’s nervous system. Maternal stress, anxiety, insecurity, or lack of emotional support can lead to intrauterine hyperactivation of the fetal stress axis. This can later affect the child’s ability to process auditory information, integrate stimuli, and sustain higher functions such as language.

Children from tense pregnancies often show different rhythms of language development, difficulties in verbal organization, or delays in initiating communication.

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The contemporary digital environment introduces a range of obstacles in language development. Screens offer intense visual stimulation, but do not offer reciprocal interaction, dialogue, or emotional connection. Language requires a living relationship, synchrony, and emotional feedback — elements digital media cannot provide.

Although children may learn songs, letters, or visual recognition of concepts, these gains do not equate to the development of spontaneous language. The result is a profile of a child who is “visually advanced but verbally delayed.”

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Some contemporary children show heightened emotional and sensory sensitivity. They process the world through images, bodily sensations, subtle perceptions, and less through words. For these children, the transition from complex inner experience to verbal expression requires more time and more emotional stability.

In such cases, language delay does not reflect a deficit, but a different neuropsychological rhythm that needs specific support, not pressure.

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In many families, the child becomes, unintentionally, a “container” for unspoken tensions. In the presence of conflict, parental anxiety, or repressed emotions, the child may inhibit language as a mechanism to maintain emotional balance in the family. Their verbal expression becomes minimal so as not to disturb the emotional climate.

This pattern is often seen in children who:

• are highly empathetic,

• subtly perceive the states of others,

• instinctively try “not to disturb.”

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The increasing need for speech therapy among children cannot be explained solely through biological or educational factors. Psychosomatic analysis shows that language is formed at the intersection of safety, connection, adequate stimulation, and emotional freedom. In many cases, language delay is a signal that the child’s environment needs adjustment, that their internal rhythm needs support, or that their emotions have not yet found a space for expression.

Language is the result of a healthy relationship, not just a cognitive function. Thus, speech therapy becomes not only an intervention addressing the symptom, but also an invitation to rebuild the emotional context in which the child develops their voice.

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CASE STUDY

A revealing clinical episode was that of a four-year-old boy brought initially for piano lessons, not for therapy. His mother, visibly worried, said as soon as she entered:

“He doesn’t really talk at home… almost at all.”

But what I saw in front of me was not a silent child, but a child full of energy, curious, expansive — with a vitality that, in many cases, hides an unspoken voice, not an absent one.

The moment he entered the room, he explored the space with impressive speed. The mother seemed convinced that he wouldn’t be able to work with me:

“I don’t think he’ll have any patience at all…”, she said, almost apologizing.

I invited him to the piano. He pressed a few keys — three, four, maybe five. He didn’t stay even two or three minutes. He left immediately. His body was in constant motion, with the energy of a child who shows you, without words, that his inner world moves at the same rhythm.

But in that energy I recognized something familiar: verbal potential that simply had not yet found the right channel, the space where it could be validated without being corrected.

Many children come into the world with an open sensitivity, as if carrying subtle information from a rich inner space. They understand, feel, and translate the world differently. But if we, the adults, anchor them only here — in rules, in “this is how you should do it,” in “don’t say nonsense” — these children get blocked. They shut down. They grow silent.

However, when the right space opens for them, when they are received, validated, and allowed to express their own message, language flows naturally. Because it is not a lack of language.

It is a lack of inner permission.

And in that hour and a half, the child received, for the first time, the permission to be heard exactly as he is.

The mother watched in disbelief. At the end, she said:

“I’ve never heard him talk so much… never.”

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✍️ Natalia Alexandra Buciuman

Psychologist specialized in Psychosomatic Medicine