Monday, January 04, 2010

now I can't get him to be quiet

This article from the UK Times implies that the blame for children who aren't talking by the age of 3 should be laid right at Mommy's door. I'm sure I have written before about my dragging Will into the speech therapist because he had only said 10 words by the age of 3 and only used them in the confines of our house. He went to Italian daycare one morning a week so I could volunteer on base and they said he didn't say anything the entire 2 years he went there.

Way back then I was the super-educational mama, reading to him at least a dozen storybooks a day, pushing his stroller around the baby loving Italian countryside ("Bello, bello bambino!!"), playing with him on the floor, taking him to playgroup, having a TV-free home. For some reason he was more interested in playing with the hinges on the cabinets than learning to talk. If he wanted something I could figure it out for the most part. Finally his brain and mouth clicked and he was speaking in full sentences by the age of 4. Now in 6th grade his verbal skills are just as well developed as any former smooth 2 year old chatterbox. The comments box after the article is filled with successful people who started talking late, evidence of the nonsense of these so-called experts.

Toddlers between the ages of 2 and 3 should be able to use up to 300 words, including adjectives, and be able to link words together, according to I CAN, the children’s communication charity. Late speech development can lead to problems, such as low achievement at school or mental health problems.

The survey of more than 1,000 parents found that a child’s background was not a factor in how quickly they learnt to talk. Working parents who put their babies in day care are just as likely to have a child whose speech develops late as those who leave their baby in front of the television.
(Are these the only reasons why children talk late? But saying otherwise wouldn't induce guilt, I'm sure.)

Almost one in six parents reported that their child had problems learning to talk. Among parents of boys the figure rose to one in four.
(Could it be that boys and girls are different? Could it be that development varies more than the "experts" suggest?)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have 4 children who talk, 2 boys and 2 girls. The girls have all been talking very early- complete, complex sentences by 3. My older boy (my second-born) only said a few wors when he turned two, but 4 months or so later, something clicked and he starting using more words. I expected my younger son to be like his brother and talk, if not late, then not so early as the girls. I was wrong. He turned 2 in October and he can say all sorts of things, sentences and all. Every child is different. My oldest two were in daycare, as I was on active duty. My youngest have never been in daycare. THe oldest two were weaned to formula at 3-4 months, the youngest breastfed exclusively. They are each individuals and havde defied any effort on my part to find a pattern.