From: dsegelho@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Diane Segelhorst)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Late Talkers
Date: 11 Sep 92 20:22:10 GMT
Reply-To: dsegelho@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Diane Segelhorst)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Annapolis Detachment, CDNSWC

As many of you know, my son Brad (25 months) has been a late talker.
I was a little concerned at his poor articulation.  (Most words have just
a vowel sound, or vowel and ending consonants, but very few come out
starting with a consonant sound.  Also, most words get only one syllable
pronounced.)  At his two year checkup, I mentioned my concern to his
pediatrician.  She had several comments that I thought might be of widespread
interest.

According to my pediatrician, by the time a child is two, a stranger
should be able to understand 50% of what the child is saying (without
Mommy having to interpret.)  The other things to be concerned about
are how well the child understands you, and how big his vocabulary is.
If the child is learning new words on a regular basis and understands
what is said to him, he is probably learning language at a good pace.
If these things are not happening, there may be a hearing or speech
problem.

The doctor tried to get Brad talking, but he wasn't really very cooperative.
 Also, some of the things she tried to get him to say were unfamiliar
to him.  In any case, we decided to go ahead with a speech evaluation
(provided free by my county board of education upon physician referral.)
A speech therapist came to our home, so Brad was in a familiar environment,
and brought a big bag of different toys and played with him.  She had
a number of comments that were also interesting.  (To end Brad's story,
she said he has a few speech delays, but nothing worth trying to treat
at this time.  He may have a "tongue tie", where the membrane that attaches
to the underside of the tongue extends further than normal, which makes
it hard for him to make some sounds.  If he doesn't grow out of it,
it can be corrected very simply.  But she said he is a very bright boy
(of course I already knew that :-)) and doesn't really have anything
to worry about.They will reevaluate him in 6 months just to be sure.)

The therapist said many children learn a word one way, and then don't
change their pronunciation of it.  For example, two of the words Brad
learned fairly early on were shoes and juice.  However, they both sound
like "oose".  He still syas them both that way.  Words he has learned
more recently he says more nearly correctly.  Apparently this is very
common among young children.  The therapist also said that as long as
he seemed to be continuing in learning new words, and was doing better
at pronouncing the new ones, there wasn't much to be done now.  She
said working on pronunciation in a therapy type situation is not usually
very successful until a child is closer to three.  The type of therapy
that is done younger is more for developing the CONCEPT of language
in children who don't seem to have that. (ie don't start putting words
together into phrases and sentences)  Brad does that quite well - in
fact he puts together sentences with two or three ideas in them, if
only you can tell what all the words are:-)!


Diane Segelhorst
dsegelho@oasys.dt.navy.mil
Mom to Brad, 2.1 years, and Carrie, almost 3 months
Newsgroups: misc.kids