Development of speech breathing in a child

Exercises aimed at developing proper speech breathing are present in almost all speech therapy classes.
The reason for this is the great importance of the ability to control the process of inhalation and exhalation during speech. Even from the school course, we remember that sounds are nothing more than the result of the movement of a stream of air exhaled by the lungs. The quality of speech directly depends on how correctly and efficiently you inhale and exhale.

Speech breathing dysfunction leads to incorrect pronunciation of phrases, lack of fluency of speech, and intonation errors. The vagueness of phrases and the occurrence of forced pauses in statements are a consequence of the underdevelopment of the respiratory system.

Among other things, breathing exercises are also an important “weapon” in the fight for good health. The well-known Strelnikov and Buteyko complexes help cope with many diseases affecting the upper respiratory tract.

Rules for conducting breathing exercises

Undoubtedly, classes will be most effective if they are carried out not only during a lesson with a speech therapist, but also periodically repeated at home. Parents need to remember that breathing exercises and games can tire the child and even cause slight dizziness, so it is important to consider some conditions:

It is best to exercise before meals.
The room in which classes are held must be well ventilated. It's even better if you have the opportunity to exercise outdoors.
You cannot use the artillery attack tactics. Classes should not be long. 3-5 minutes at a time is quite enough.
A teacher or one of the parents needs to monitor the correctness of the breathing process. During breathing, the shoulders should not rise, the muscles of the neck, face or abdomen should not tense.

How to do breathing exercises?

Gymnastics to establish proper breathing will not take much time. Take a 10-minute break between classes or reading fairy tales and offer your child a new game. The room where you will do the exercises should be clean and well ventilated: it is not advisable for the baby to deeply inhale dusty, stagnant air. It’s great if you do the lesson while walking in the park, but not in the winter frosts.

The basic principle of forming correct breathing: take a quick deep breath through the nose so that the lungs are filled with air until they stop. This is followed by a slow, smooth exhalation through the mouth. The flow should not be too strong so that the air is used evenly and economically.

During classes, you need to monitor whether the child makes mistakes. Exhalation should take place according to the following rules:

the folded lips are relaxed, the cheeks are not puffed out;
the entire flow goes through the mouth, air should not escape through the nose;
exhale completely until the air runs out;
If the baby hums or pronounces sounds, you should not pause for a short breath of air.

Advice
When performing any exercise, make sure that all air flow goes through the mouth. If your baby doesn't succeed, gently pinch his nostrils with your fingers or use a special diving device.

Children may enjoy the games so much that they don't want to stop playing. Don't let your child become overtired: tasks may seem simple, but in fact they can cause fatigue and dizziness. You can start classes with children 2 years old; the duration of the first training sessions should not exceed 3 minutes. After each approach, take a break and let your baby catch his breath. Alternate breathing exercises for children with other activities. Do not do breathing exercises immediately after lunch on a full stomach, wait 2-3 hours.

Correct speech breathing - how it should be:

Active inhalation is performed exclusively through the nose.
Exhalation should occur through the mouth, long, evenly, without jolts or pauses.

Sometimes children exhale through their nose. Try simply closing the nasal passages with your fingers so that the child understands what is required of him. Explain that the lips should not be pursed or tense when exhaling. They need to be pulled out with a “tube”.

For self-control during classes, ask the child to place his palm between the ribs and stomach (diaphragm). During inhalation, the front wall of the abdomen and chest rise slightly, as if “moving away” from under the palm, and as you exhale, they fall, returning to their original place.

First exercises for proper exhalation

First of all, you need to ensure that the child learns to make a smooth, long exhalation through the mouth. Do not forget that after each deep exhalation the baby should pause to rest. You can conduct a lesson with one student, but it is much more interesting if he has at least one partner with whom he can compete.

The following games are suitable for first lessons.

"Fluttering Butterflies" Hang several bright paper butterflies on thin threads at the level of the baby's face. Show your child how they flutter when you blow in the right direction. The exercise time is no more than 10 seconds.
"Tree in the Wind." Attach some colored strips of tissue paper or Christmas tree tinsel to a wooden stake so that it hangs down in all directions. Say that this is a tree, if the wind blows on it, the leaves will sway and rustle.
"Autumn leaf fall." In the fall, collect or cut out colorful leaves from colored paper. Place them in a heap on the table and offer to blow to make the leaves fly. Then they need to be collected in a box or basket, and the game can be repeated.
“Blizzard” is performed as the previous exercise, only paper snowflakes or balls of cotton wool are placed on the table.
"Cockerel or hen." In the summer, pick a dandelion and offer to blow on it once. If there are fluffs left, it’s a cockerel with a comb; if all of them fly away, then it’s a chicken. Explain that there are very few cockerels in the poultry house, let the baby strive to make as many chickens as possible.

Try not to let your child get bored. Come up with new stories and competitions. If it is not possible to invite other children, let objects enter into the competition. Make a guess which leaf will fall first, which butterfly will fly farthest.

When the child learns to exhale correctly and begins to blow away light paper figures without difficulty, the exercises can be complicated.

"Leader Ribbon" Hang several paper ribbons close to each other and offer to blow so that the selected strip flies higher than the others.
"Pencil Race" Place two pencils on the table. The baby must move each of them to the maximum distance with one exhalation.
"Don't drop the ball." Throw an inflated balloon into the air and ask the child to blow on it from below, without letting it fall to the floor.

You can come up with a lot of games. Monitor your child's progress and gradually complicate the tasks. The first time the child will blow on the paper figures from a distance of about 30 cm, move them a little further each time. Be warned that the results of only one exhalation are taken into account - if there was at least a small inhalation in the middle, not a single snowflake will be counted. Each time, praise your child for successes, and find a consoling explanation for failures: the paper is too heavy, the figurine is stuck to the table.

Games and exercises for the development of speech breathing in children

Working on the formation of correct exhalation

At first, it is necessary to teach the child proper physiological breathing, to help develop the duration of exhalation and its strength. The following games are suitable for these purposes:

“Smelling the flowers.” Inhale air through your nose, hold your breath for a while, and exhale completely.
"Let's blow out the candles." For some reason, all children love to blow out candles :-) Use this for educational purposes. Inhale deeply through your nose and exhale evenly and forcefully through your mouth. When one candle can be easily extinguished, you can play birthday cake. An excellent opportunity to practice controlling the duration and force of exhalation.
"Dandelions". It's so fun to blow parachutes off dandelions while walking! A great exercise for outdoor activities. Remember the old game “Grandfather or Grandmother” - if all the fluff is blown away from the dandelion, then the bald head of the “grandfather” will remain, and if something remains, then it will be the “grandmother” with a modest hairstyle.
"Ships". Launch paper boats into a bowl of water and show your child how to move them by blowing strongly forward. Whose ship will sail further? The main rule is that one “time” of the game is one exhalation.

There are actually quite a lot of similar games. Parents themselves will quickly remember them or come up with their own. You can collect dry autumn leaves and lay them out on the table and create a real fall of leaves by blowing hard on them. You can play football by exhaling and trying to push a ping-pong ball into the designated goal with a stream of air. You can roll pencils across the table using the power of your breath. The main thing is to monitor the correct inhalation and exhalation and not let the child get overtired!

Breathing training using speech material

Onomatopoeia. On one exhalation, the child must pronounce sounds, following the teacher’s instructions. For example:
the wolf howls - “Uuu-uuu”;
the rain is dripping - “drip-drip-drip”, etc.
Good help in training speech breathing is provided by such exercises in which vocal material is combined with movements:
“clock” - starting position as in the previous exercise, arms up. Inhale through the nose, tilt to the side as you exhale “Boom!” (we imitate the motion of a pendulum);
“chauffeur” - in a standing position, arms extended forward, palms clenched into fists. While pretending to rotate the steering wheel with his hands, as he exhales, the child imitates the sound of the engine “Rrrrr”.
"Who is bigger?" During one exhalation, the child must say an ever-lengthening phrase, for example, “Cat. The cat is running. The cat is running home." Compete with your child to see who can say the most words. Important: make sure that the pace of speech does not speed up and that the exhalation is uniform.
For classes, you can use memorization of children's short poems. The main task is to pronounce the lines while maintaining proper breathing.
Tongue twisters stimulate not only the clarity of pronunciation of sounds, but also the observance of rational exhalation. Be sure to draw the child's attention to the correct, uniform exhalation.

Speech breathing in preschoolers - what are its features?

The child does not immediately have correct speech breathing; it is formed as he develops.

The respiratory apparatus is poorly developed. Speech can be quiet, often children do not finish words or phrases.
Irrational distribution of air during exhalation (this can be noticed when reciting poems, the child seems to “swallow” air after a couple of words. An accelerated rate of speech may also be observed, the child wants to pronounce the phrase as quickly as possible while there is air)
Uneven exhalation. Speech sounds either quiet or loud.
Weak exhalation and incorrectly directed air flow leads to distortion of sounds.
Narrow nasal passages. Maintain respiratory hygiene.

Children at 2 years old pronounce about 2-3 words while exhaling, at 3-4 years old approximately 3-5 words, at 4-5 years old 4-6 words, at older preschool age from 5 to 7 words.

During diagnosis, the speech therapist must pay attention to the speech breathing of the subject. This is one of the fundamental factors of correctional work.

Why is proper breathing necessary?

The artist and opera singer need to calculate the volume of air in the lungs so that at the very climax of a tense monologue an unplanned pause for inspiration is not required. Perhaps your child’s future profession will not require such abilities from him, but the ability to speak correctly is necessary for any person. Few people will listen to the opinion of the interlocutor if he speaks unintelligibly, swallows the endings of words, or stops to breathe in the very middle of a phrase.

With a well-delivered speech, a person can speak for a long time, and this process will not tire him. If inhalations and exhalations occur randomly, a lot of energy is spent on pronouncing words and phrases, and the muscles involved in speech quickly get tired. Don't expect things to get better over time. Any of us has had to talk with people who either chatter quickly or inhale in the middle of a long word. Do you want your baby to talk like this all his life? If not, start training proper breathing at 2-3 years of age.

Teachers and doctors have noticed that active children who constantly run, jump, and dance have a better developed respiratory system than those who love cartoons and drawing. Diseases of the nasopharynx, lungs, and bronchi also have a bad effect on breathing. Approach the development of speech breathing comprehensively: monitor the child’s health, do not let him sit still for a long time, take him to the sports ground. During exercises or outdoor games, observe how the child breathes, explain that with proper inhalation and exhalation, he will run faster and jump higher.

Few people are not irritated by inappropriate pauses in the speech of their interlocutor. This is not only ugly, but can also lead to a distortion of the meaning of what was said. Remember the historical example with the phrase: “Execution cannot be pardoned.” Imagine that this was not written on paper, but said out loud. After the first word, the speaker ran out of air, took a breath and quickly said the end of the sentence. To prevent such incidents from ever happening to your child, teach him to speak beautifully and correctly.