The early years of a child’s development have the greatest impact on their future, as all later learning is based on these early foundations. Due to the way the brain develops, if speech acquisition is delayed during the key formative years, it can impact children’s development significantly.
Extensive evidence is now showing that children are suffering developmental delays due to the recent lockdowns, and the children who are already at risk are the most severely affected. It is very important to enrich a child’s environment with added opportunities to rectify the losses and delays of lockdowns. One easy and accessible way of doing this, which will dynamically enhance other supports, is Sound Therapy, which stimulates the activation of speech and language pathways.
Early years are crucial
Language and learning specialists have been aware for some decades that the early stages of development have a great impact on a child’s future. Brain pathways and language skills develop sequentially, with each new skillset depending on the previous one. Therefore if certain skills are missed, such as crawling, facial identification or babbling, it sets the child back in the next stages of development. Therefore, if children miss out on social contact, conversation and normal interactions during their early formative years, catching up to fill these gaps may be slower than expected. It has been very difficult for parents raising their children during lockdowns, as they could not access many activities that help to develop vocabulary, such as visiting a farm or seeing the grandparents.
A study of over 500 parents in the UK, by the University of Oxford and four other leading universities looked at social development in children under three. Researchers say the first 1001 days after a child is born are crucial for laying the foundations for later development.
Charity Speech and Language UK said that Covid restrictions affected some children's development by limiting socialising and new experiences, which helps them learn new words.
This is important as we know that vocabulary levels at age two predict children’s performance at school entry, which itself is predictive of later outcomes.
How the brain develops language
Just like a tree, the brain must develop trunks and main branches, before the more delicate twigs can be added. The development of language skills depends on exposure to multiple environments, interaction with a variety of people, seeing facial expression, interacting and having the opportunity to practice hearing and making sounds in a wide range of activities prior to entering the classroom, where more complex language skills must be mastered.
The impacts of lockdowns
During the Covid lockdowns, young children missed out on many normal social experiences at crucial times in their development.
A recent survey of schools and parents, conducted by the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK, has found that children who started school in 2020 needed more support than in previous years. Of the schools surveyed, 96% raised serious concerns about communication and language development, while 91% were concerned about social and emotional development and 89% raised concerns about literacy.
Mask wearing has also impacted language development, as children who are learning to speak rely a great deal on lip reading to help them in learning how to form sounds, such as ‘p’ or ’t’. Facial expression is a key to language, to help us understand the meaning of words, and this too has been limited by mask wearing during a child’s formative months and years.
Is Australia behind in addressing these issues?
Professionals in the UK are speaking out on these issues. Do we need a similar response in Australia?
The number of five and six-year-olds who need speech and language support at school has risen by 10% in England over the past year, according to analysis by the BBC.
Chief executive of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, Kamini Gadhok, says the BBC's research confirms what she had been told anecdotally. "It is a real worry. Our members have been telling us that they've been seeing a huge increase in the number of children referred to them," she says, and went on to explain: "We've hit a crisis point, where services are not able to meet the level of demand."
Research in the UK suggests that up to 1.5 million children face being left behind in their speaking and understanding due to disruption caused by Covid, and a majority of teachers are worried that children who are behind will not be able to catch up.
Authors of an article in Otolaryngology, Charney, Camarata and Chern, stated “The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many unintended, long-lasting consequences for society. Preventative practices such as mask wearing, social distancing, and virtual meetings and classrooms to address contagion concerns may negatively affect communication, particularly in the paediatric population, as schools have begun to open this fall.”
More than 100 charities and parent and carer organisations have written to the UK government to say long-term investment is needed to plug gaps in the specialist workforce supporting children in schools - including speech and language therapists.
Jane Harris, Chief executive of I CAN (Institute for the Clinical Advancement of Neuroplasticity) said: "For 1.5 million children to be struggling to be able to speak and to understand what is being said to them should be a wake-up call to government and the education sector.” Figures show that nearly one in five children are not meeting expected development standards by the time they reach two-and-a-half, making gaps 'more difficult to close'.
The chief executive of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, (RCSLT) Kamini Gadhok said: "Our members tell us that growing lists and waiting times for speech and language therapy are dramatically impacting on their ability to provide the support which children need for the best start in life."
In Australia too, waiting times for access to Speech Therapy are very concerning, especially for children in the more vulnerable groups. Speech Pathology Australia said this was due to widespread staff shortages in the sector, not just in remote areas but increasingly in cities as well.
A study by La Trobe University Professor of Cognitive Psychology Pamela Snow has revealed even more concerning ripple effects. According to Claire Salter Parry, a speech therapist based in Seymour, Victoria, "It showed over 50 per cent of young people in the justice system are being found to have language impairments". She went on to explain that "the unfortunate trajectory we tend to see is that kids coming to school with language delays find it really difficult to experience academic success."
This shows that Australian practitioners are aware of similar issues, but is it being taken seriously enough?
Ways to help your child
For parents or grandparents concerned that their child may have a language delay, observing expected milestones is helpful.
Early signs of a speech or language delay, according to Johns Hopkins Hospital, are:
- By 12 months is not using gestures such as pointing or waving bye-bye.
- By 18 months prefers gestures over speaking to communicate.
- By 18 months has trouble imitating sounds.
- Your child has trouble understanding simple verbal requests.
- By two years your child can only imitate speech or actions and does not produce words spontaneously.
- By two years your child cannot follow simple directions.
Once the child begins to develop speech, here are some common indicators of a speech or language delay identified by speech development experts:
- May be using a limited number of sounds.
- Hearing difficulties or glue ear.
- May have difficulty linking together more than 2 sounds.
- Speech is difficult to understand to the unfamiliar listener.
- Shows frustration at not being understood by others.
- Speech contains sound substitutions and errors.
- Speech is less clear than most of their peers.
If left untreated, the child with a speech delay may have difficulties with:
- Learning to talk, speech intelligibility and clarity.
- Vocabulary whereby a child cannot clearly get their message across due to limited word knowledge.
- Self-esteem and confidence when they realise their skills do not match their peers.
- Bullying when others become more aware of the child’s difficulties.
- Social isolation because they are unable to cope in group situations or busy environments, impacting on their ability to form and maintain friendships.
- Anxiety and stress in a variety of situations leading to difficulty reaching their academic potential.
- Academic performance: Developing literacy skills such as reading and writing and coping in the academic environment.
Engaging in conversation with your child and creating diverse environments for experience and interaction is the key to language development. Converse with your child using simple sentences and make your voice sound interesting by using different tones of voice and facial expression.
Babies and toddlers love repetition, so if your child is looking at a dog then say lots about the dog, describing what it looks like, talking about what it does and saying the word “dog” over and over again.
These same principles apply as your children grow. Talk to them about topics which interest them. Respond to what your children say and do, so they will begin linking words and sentences with meaning. Now that restrictions are easing, look for opportunities to develop your children’s vocabulary by visiting places such as libraries, city farms, parks and gardens and meeting up with friends and family.
If you think that your child is struggling to catch up with their speech and language, seeking specialised help as early as possible will make a big difference to your child’s future. However, this may be difficult for some parents, due to the increase in need combined with a shortage of services being experienced in many areas.
Sound Therapy
Using a home-based program may be a perfect option to help fill the gap and stimulate greater language development. Portable listening programs have been developed based on Dr Tomatis’s research on auditory development which begins in the womb at 4.5 months. Tomatis’s ground-breaking discoveries showed that the ear is an active organ whose development can be accelerated with the right auditory input. Sound Therapy enhances the ear brain connection, stimulating brain plasticity and increasing both receptive and expressive language skills.
The Sound Therapy International program offers a range of children’s and family packages which include the spoken word in the form of classic stories and poetry interspersed with filtered Sound Therapy music.
Listening to the filtered sounds activates the ear muscles while increasing the connections between at least ten different brain centres needed for language. Thus, the ear-brain connection is enhanced, and children often make leaps and bounds in their language development.
A special needs educator said, “the child is using longer sentences with more detail in speech” and a grateful grandparent said “our grandson was not speaking at age 5 after experiencing a trauma. He is now eight, and speaking normally, and I don’t believe he would be speaking today if it weren’t for Sound Therapy.”
Sound Therapy is affordable and accessible, and can be ordered by parents and families anywhere with no delays. It is the ideal early intervention, as it is beneficial for any child, whether they have a language difficulty or not. No testing is required, and families are free to purchase the program themselves and start using it right away. While waiting for other treatments, Sound Therapy may be a good way to give the child a head-start, as it will immediately begin correcting neural language deficits so that any future intervention is likely to be more successful.
For more information visit:
https://mysoundtherapy.com/au/what-is-sound-therapy/children-learning/
Payment plans are offered and NDIS funding is available for those with self-managed plans. https://mysoundtherapy.com/au/ndis/
Sources
https://childdevelopment.com.au/areas-of-concern/diagnoses/speech-delaydisorder/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33258739/
https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/development/language-development/language-delay
https://theconversation.com/how-lockdown-has-affected-childrens-speech-and-what-parents-can-do-to-help-160886
https://themummybubble.co.uk/toddler-speech-delay-lockdown/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-16/lengthy-speech-therapy-waitlists-leave-children-vulnerable/100292818
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-57764096
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-63373804
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10823281/Covid-lockdown-damaged-toddlers-speech-motor-skills-official-figures-reveal.html
https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/news/ep-researchers-find-that-uk-lockdown-linked-to-widening-disadvantage-gap-for-babies-and-toddlers
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/student-speech-development-slowed-by-lockdowns-20210820-p58kek.html
