Lot's of things can come up with our kids.
Sometimes they have speech and language disorders.
What causes those things?
I've brought in an expert to help us out.
In another video, Vicki, we've talked about how to do therapy or to work with your little
ones.
Especially little toddlers.
What causes this speech and language disorders in the first place?
Now, I know this is a little slippery.
But as an expert maybe you can help us out with this.
You know that's a hard question.
I get it all the time.
Why is my child having this speech and language delay.
And the first thing...
You know, there are few things we can look at that are contributing factors.
1 is their hearing.
A lot of times, we don't think about how important the hearing is to development of language
and speech.
So the first thing I would encourage you to do is to make sure your child is hearing adequately.
How does this happen?
I know that you test hearing.
Yeah, at the schools I always tests children's hearing.
Before I begin testing them for their speech and language.
Because I want to know if their hearing is good.
So, it actually kind of leads to the next thing.
If you're concerned about your child, one of the first things you can do is approach
the school district.
Now, a lot of people think, "Oh, my kid is only 3 years old.
You know, they're not going to be in the kinder garten for another 2 years."
The public schools treat children with speech and language delay from 3 years old and up.
And there is always in almost every community, I haven't found one yet that doesn't.
But maybe out in a rural area.
You might have to look a little harder.
But there is also a birth to 3 program.
And the school district can send you that way.
So my first recommendation would be call the school district and they will be able to help
you find an assessment center.
Either they're at the district or if your child is younger than 3 with the early intervention
program that services that area.
We'll depend a little bit on your community, obviously but you can also look to resources
like universities who typically have programs in audiology or speech language pathology.
And they will have student who are actually looking for practicum hours to test kids or
to do these kinds of assessments.
Audiology centers, hearing centers.
These are places where you can get access to the kind of equipment that's necessary
to test the kids.
So, you're going to check with your schools.
So one of the causes can be hearing.
Another cause is genetic issues such as down syndrome or autism spectrum syndrome.
Those can cause speech and language delays that are just inherent with the disorder itself.
So if you're really concerned, make sure you've check with your pediatrician about any possible
disorders that the child may have that's concurrent with the speech language issues.
Some of those things, you already being aware of.
You're going to be aware of.
If you've got a child with some special needs.
But to understand that speech and language development are often affected those kinds
of syndromes or conditions.
Another cause can be environmental input or a lack there of.
So, one of the things you can do is just really stimulate the environment for language enrichment.
Making sure that there's a lot of talk going on.
In another video, we talked about how to enrich your environment, language wise.
And so you'd want it, just provide a really language enrich environment for your child.
And that sometimes helps with the delayed speech and language.
It occurred to me, Vicki as you mentioned that.
That sometimes we can't prevent something from happening and we don't even really understand
what the causes are for some of these things.
With all that being said, having a language enriched environment provides the best possible
chance for your child to develop those language and speech skills.
And a lot of parents put on a lot of really educational TV or apps that are educational.
While those have some place, there is research that shows that they do not provide the same
language enrichment than actual human to human talking does.
The number of words that a child needs to hear is phenomenal and the word they hear
on video they found don't actually count.
So you need to be talking to your child.
There something there that's important about modeling but also the social interaction.
There's a lot of subtleties in language that there's facial expression, there's all kinds
of none verbals that occur in a language-enrich environment.
So you're saying we should actually interact with our kids.
Interact with our kids as much as possible.
But you know, when it boils down to us, most speech and language delays, we don't know
the origin.
We don't know what causes it.
So I thought we could talk just a little bit about norms.
What should a child be doing when?
And the first thing I want to talk about is what's the difference between speech and language.
We've been talking about that but many people don't realize there's a big difference.
Speech is our sound production.
The way that we actually form words, the sounds that we say, the way we put those sounds together.
So that's speech.
So, if a child is having problems with S's or R's.
Those are 2, the common ones, right?
That's speech, right?
We're talking even things like instead of saying cat, they're tat, you know?
We've seen that.
Okay?
So, they're sound production is just a little bit different.
if it's in the sound production, that's speech, that's not language?
That's not language.
Language is the way we use any communication mode to convey our thoughts or to interact
with other people.
Now, you'll see little babies.
They can have language, they know how to draw you in with their face or with different things
that they're doing.
They can draw you in.
And that is communication.
I was interacting with a young, I think a 6 months old child and as I was trying to
get her attention and get her to connect with me and she started smiling at me and interacting.
That's...
That's communication as well.
That's early language development.
Yeah, it is.
Because of the interaction with me.
Even though there's no speech involved?
Right.
Okay.
So we got speech, we got language.
As far as speech is concerned, let's talk just a little bit about parents are often
very concerned about their toddler who's not saying an R or an L. There are early language
sounds.
And they're usually the most visual ones.
Like, "Pah, Bah, Hmmmah."
Those are early sounds.
And we expect the child to have those very early like it at...
Even like 9, 10, 11 months.
They're starting to say, "Pa baba, ma-mama, da-dada."
And they're saying those early sounds.
So we expect those early sounds to come first.
And we want them to have all of those early sounds really by the time they're 2 and they're
really starting to speak.
18 months to 2 years old.
The next set of sounds are going to come when they're...
By the time they're 3 or 4.
And that's things like "Kih, Tah, Gah."
The sounds we don't really see as much but we still hear.
They're an explosive sound.
If that makes sense.
So kind of...
This comes so naturally to you because you're speech pathologist.
Yeah.
But that makes some sense.
I mean, there are some that are little more hidden but there's still easily heard.
Yeah.
They're more explosive.
And then after 4 years old, we start to see kids get some of the harder sounds that are
sustained.
Things like "Fhhh."
The F, the S. And even some kids start to get their R and L. However, the R, L and the
S, they aren't considered delayed until after the age of 6, 7.
Right in through there.
Oh really?
It takes kids that long sometimes to get the R, the L and the S. So common to hear kids
with trouble with those particular sounds.
So, they're not necessarily delayed?
It's not delay.
Even a child who's saying S with their tongue between their teeth, "Thhh".
That's a really common delay at 4, 5, 6.
You want to see them growing out of it by the time they're 7.
And so those are some different things that you can look for.
Just realize that there are norms and so even though your child...
It's so interesting though.
You can have one kids who is 3 and has their perfect R and a 5 year old that doesn't have
their R. And that 5 year old is not delayed.
And so, you got to be come aware of the norms.
That being said, if you have a concern please see a speech language pathologist.
Because I have seen some kids who do have a delay of the sounds that they should have
had.
Or would've been expecting to have and they waited quite a while.
Thinking "Well, it's normal."
So if you have any concerns, please see a speech language pathologist.
They'll be able to help to figure it out.
Oh, professional help?
Good idea.
Now, as for language, we can it the mean length of utterance.
So, in other words, how many words they say in time?
We expect that...
It's usually about the age they are.
So a one year old starting to say, 1 word at the time.
An 18 month old, starting to put 1.
Maybe 2 words together.
So we expect by 18 month old, we should have about 20 words.
And a 2 year old should have about 50 words.
And once the child gets 50 words, we see him start putting 2 words together.
So a 2 year old staring to say, "Daddy, go.
Mommy, come.
Look, mom."
You know, that type of thing.
You wont see a child put 2 words together usually until they have at least 50 words.
So that's around 2 years old.
And in about 2 and a half, 3, they start to put 2 and a half, 3 words.
You know, they might say, "Mommy, go bye-bye.
Daddy in big car."
There's a 4 word but the next...
Usually they're talking, "Up, mommy."
You know, same words together.
And so by the time they're 3, they should be having 3 words together.
If your child is 3 and not stringing 3 words together, it might be time to seek some help.
I'm just doing the math here.
I should be doing 52 word.
Okay, this works until about 3 and a half, 4 years old.
Okay.
Then it starts blossoming.
And you know, it's so interesting.
We've learned so much of the language rules by the time we're 5 years old.
We have very little to learn of that except vocabulary expansion.
It's huge and so we really want to give our children the best chance they can to gain
that language early.
Just make their environment rich and if you're concerned, please see a speech and language
pathologist as soon as possible.
So we don't have all the answers to what causes this problems.
But thankfully there's a lot that you can do.
There's a lot of things you can do as a parent too.
Vicki and I have put together the Parenting Power-Up.
You can see the ling right over there.
Check that out.
We have put together the philosophy behind parenting and a lot of practical ways to apply
it.
It's an audio course you can listen to while you're working out.
It's on the membership site.
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