Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1959-09-10

duction to a 10-year-old boy at
Children's Hospital who had
never spoken, other than to say
meow for cat, and to call all
his sisters "Barby," because his
oldest sister was named Bar
bara.
The lad was an aphasic suf-
fering with asphasia, a condi-
ton in which the person under.
stands all that is said but can
not produce words because of
some psychic blockage.
The condition differs sharply
between adults and children in
that the adult knows the
language while little children
are unfamiliar with speech.
: UnrecOgnized and ignored in
children, the condition can as.
! sumo measly unbeatable pro.
portions, mistaken in some
cases for near imbecility while
the child actually Is of average
intelligence.
Some asphasic children can
read and write. But to teach or
encourage them to speak, Their.
apists must instruct the child
in the phonetics, or sounds, Of
the alphabet. After the child
learns that the letter z sounds
like zeeee, he's on his way to
saying Zebra.
With an ordinary up.bringing,
of course, the child's mother
plays the role practiced by Mrs.
Zaremba and her colleagues.
Mrs. Zaremba warns that "a
great deal of prelanguage activ-
ity takes place from the time a
child begins to babble at four
months until he begins using
his first words between nine
and IL months.
Smart Mamas, she said, will
join their offspring in this
practice for talking and babble
right back, and not be dis
Outraged over the lack of
progress between II and IS
months when children are busy
learning to walk and feed them
selves.
After IS months, she said. a
child's vocabulary leaps upward
from Is to 20 words to around
$50 words by "a months. During
this phase the child will gable
through the jargon period when
his speech sounds like adult con-
versation except that it does
not make cohesive whole.
This stage is regarded by
speech techn.cians as a reher-
sal for connected speech that
comes around two years of age.
A pitfall for many children
lies between the ages of two
and four years when they strive
TO make great use of a growing
vocabulary. Facing a situation
for which they may not have a
word. some hesitate and fill in
blanks with the familiar, "ah,
er, an" and so forth.
Most children breeze through
this period in about six months
while others may spend two
trying years in its throes.
Worried parents can commune
cate their anxiety to their child
who too often feels their disap-
pointment and sinks deeper in
uncommunicativeness.
Still another pitfall awaits
the child on his first day at
school. Here. he is suddenly
thrown before adult strangers
and 80 or 40 classmates. The
shock sometimes will cause chill |
dren to relapse into baby talk or
stammering for a short time.
This will taper off in time.
Mrs. Zaremba offers this
Baby's Baedeker for average
speech:
. At 2, Johnny" can use all
the vowels and the consonants
NJ, B, p, X. G., w, H, n. T and
D. However he often omits final
consonants of words. He is any
where between so and 65 per |
cent ineligible and he knows /
names of objects he uses.
. At 3, Johnny is up to so .
per cent understandable al.
though many individual sounds
are faulty and he will try to use
easy sounds for hard ones. Al
though he may have 300 TO 500
words, he is experiencing flu.
ence problems.
. At 4, Johnny has learned