Article / Prospective Article
Child Psychologist, Vier Psychology Service, Indonesia
Erna Marina Kusuma
Child Psychologist
Vier Psychology Service
Indonesia
20 November 2020 ; 7 December 2020
Since the digital era began, especially in the 2000s, children began to know computers or gadgets in their daily activities. In Indonesia, in recent years, a 2-year-olds child use a lot of gadgets and watch TV in their daily lives. Anamnesa results show that on average, children are played TV show about 6 to 8 hours a day since they are still babies. This resulted in the ability of children in terms of communication, fine motor, focus and interaction of children with the surrounding people to be reduced.
Over the past 10 years, 80 percent of patients who have speech delays, hyperactivity and other developmental disorders, start using gadgets and televisions since they were infants. The most common symptoms are the lack of response to the surrounding and a delayed 2-way communication. This shows that the use of electronics such as gadgets and television excessively, since the baby period, will ultimately effect the development of the cerebrum of the brain, which is very useful for language development and response to the surrounding.
A natural way that can help the brain become actively re-integrated is by activation of the nerves. Nerve activation is a combination of various techniques such as neuropsychology, speech pathology, craniosacral, accupressure and speech therapy. This neural activation is done by simple motion and light massage integrated into the head and inside of the mouth. This movement and massage can be done passively or actively. Some parts of this nerve activation movement is simple and can be done at home. However, for nerve activation in the mouth needs to be done in the clinic by professionals who understand the physiology so as not to be wrong and fatal. To know how this neural activation works, it is necessary to have an understanding in some developmental aspects, such as the development of the child’s language, speech nerve and its location and the basics of the methods that are used in nerve activation.
Based on the theory of language development so far, the development stage of child language is as follows:
0 – 1 the : babble
1 – 2 the : Short sentence
2 – 7 the : new words
7 – 12 the : perfect stringing of words
As we should know, a 2-year-old child should have entered the development stage of making short sentences. However, nowadays many children aged 2 years are still in the babbling stage that the development should have been passed. In fact, there are still many cases where the children are already aged 3 years to 5 years, but their development of language is still equivalent to 1 year old children and even under. The decline in language development is very important to be noticed, especially for the preparation of children to enter school later.
In order to be able to activate speech nerves in children, then we need to know physiologically about the speech nerve and where it lies.
The cranial nerve is a nerve located in the brain. The main function of this nerve is to regulate all the functions of organs that are in the area of the head ranging from consciousness include concentration, communication function, chewing function to swallow function. The cranial nerves have three functions that allow us to swallow and speak. To swallow and speak, the cranial nerves will cooperate with the nerves present in the mouth and tongue that include the delicate nerves and muscles in the tongue and mouth.
When food or drink passes through the posterior portion of the tongue, the muscles nerved by the vagus and glossopharyngeal nerve will push it down the back toward the hypopharynx to the esophagus. The muscle of the tongue that is nervous by the hypoglossal nerve plays a pivotal role in this.
- Production of sound through the phonation, the sound of the vocal cords allows the air to directly produce sound. The muscles that move the vocal cords are innervated by the laryngeal recurrent nerves that are part of the vagus nerve.
- Making sounds can be understood with clear articulation, this articulation process depends on the pharyngeal muscles, tongue, facial excretion muscles, mandible movements and palatum
- pitch process. This pitch is modulated through cricothyroid muscle tension and relaxation of the vocal cords. All movements of the vocal cords are controlled by the ambiguous nucleus.
Damage to other nucleus or nerve lesions can cause abnormalities in the process of swallowing and speaking. This damage can be aided by activation of speech nerve located in the brain, mouth and tongue
The concentration span of children from kindergarten to elementary school is about 15 – 20 minutes, junior high – school about 45 – 60 minutes and young adults upwards is 2 hours.
The problem often faced by children nowadays is their very low concentration span. There are still many cases of patients of 8 years old children, but his/her concentration span is only in 5 minutes. It would be very difficult for these children to take lesson in his/her classroom.
Nerve activation can increase awareness around and activate cranial function more optimally. In addition, the tongue and the inside of the mouth will also become active and the muscles of the mouth become supple.
The head where the cranial lies will be strengthened so as to activate the nerves affected by the cranial including the function that affects chewing and swallowing.
The part of the mouth, other than the cheeks and jaw, will also be activated inside the mouth, like tongue.
Massage is given in the head and in the mouth. Massage on the head is given to activate the cranial and brain integration parts.
Is a simple movement that needs to be done at home to maintain and strengthen the nerves that have been activated? Movement gymnastics performed depends on the child’s problem. The movement to increase focus is different from the movement to activate the speech nerve
Children who are having speech delay are often followed by their way of eating those who do not chew. This resulted in the muscles of the jaw and the area around their mouth are still very stiff. The activation given in this area aims to flex back the rigid muscles.
In addition to not chewing, a problem that is often experienced by children who are having speech delay is their difficulties in sucking or blowing. The activation in the mouth serves to help them to learn faster for blowing or sucking. This activation is given in the areas of the tongue, gum and inner cheek.
Nerve activation can be done with 2 periods, each day for 15 minutes or once a week with a duration of about 30-45 minutes.
The ideal process is the provision of activation once a week because generally every week can be seen positive changes from patients. Nevertheless, daily administration of activation also has a positive effect on the progress of the child. However, for the rapid permanent outcomes, tends to occur in patients that given nerve activation once a week.
Activation given every day can be done 5 days in a row. This activation should be repeated a month later with the same process. This activation process is usually used to help patients who come from out of town.
Since 10 years ago it was seen that patients who were given the method of nerve activation had increased 95 percent in speech ability compared with patients who were not given neural activation method. The categories of patients in this case are aged 3 to 5 years, experiencing speech delays and concentration disorders, have never tried any therapy, given the method of nerve activation in therapy for 4 months with a duration of once a week in the mouth activation and every day 3 hours of motion exercises in home, a 95 percent increase in speech and 2-way communication and focus. While patients were given daily activation for 5 days and performed once a month increased 80 percent in communication skills and their focus.
Nerve activation helps speed up the therapeutic process of children with speech disorder and concentration disorder.
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