Does your child communicate with you by pointing at things or showing you things instead of speaking them out? Is your child uninterested in reading books or inattentive when somebody is reading to them? Does your child get upset when you are unable to decipher what they are trying to communicate to you? Are these problems indicative of any kind of disorder?
Do the above thoughts or comments arise in your mind too? Well, if there has been no speech from a year old child, the concerns related to your kid’s language or speech skills need to be addressed. Thus, identification of speech and language delay at an early stage can be beneficial toward fast recovery.
Why Early Intervention?
It is assumed that around 2% of the children born every year have form of disability. The majority of such children have speech identification and language delay or disability which can directly or indirectly affect their social, personal, vocational or academic life. In such cases, some children become normal as soon as they start going to school, but identifying the remaining children who are unable to recover on their own is important. Some parents and adults possess the belief that the treatment for speech and language delay can begin once the child has started speaking. However, research suggests that children are capable of dealing with this very wisely even before utterance of a single word. For example, a child is capable of understanding the difference between foreign or native language, use various non-verbal indications to express their various needs, and imitate various patterns to speech via babbling.
Early identify speech and language delay includes the understanding and treating methods provided to the child who is below 3 years of age and this family. If there is any deferral in the identification of speech and language delay, the child may quickly fall behind; identification at an early stage can help to improve communication skills.
Who is supposed to get evaluated?
The kid who has been identified to have speech and language delay need to be examined at an early stage and periodically. Children that have been diagnosed with some other medical conditions like a genetic defect, chronic ear infections, fetal alcohol syndrome, neurological defects, development disorder and many others must also be evaluated. Additionally, even children who are not deemed to be high risk must be evaluated if their speech and language are unlike the other children of same age group.
How is evaluation executed?
The evaluation can be formal or informal, and can include any random standardized tests. The play and communication with parents, family members, physicians, teachers, care taker is observed, and a report is generated using those collected data and natural speech samples. There can be various sessions to evaluate or gather sufficient information for accurate diagnosis. The early identify speech and language delay team consists of a pathologist of speech-language, psychologist, audiologist, neurologist, otolaryngologist, nurse, pediatrician, social worker, and electro physiologist. As the speech and language delay and disorder can be caused because of several of reasons, each expert or professional helps with their contribution to the evaluation.
What actually is Speech and Language Treatment?
The result of the evaluation determines the related diagnosis. The function in the identified area can be increased by remediation, and can also help to avoid other related issues. For example, treatment of language disorder can help to overcome offset learning disability.
Language related activities are experienced with a natural touch. Thus, during the development of the child, these activities are presented. Acknowledgments are consistently stimulated and the outcomes are always rewarded. Plays are used to teach language models, conversation rules, or communication.
Thus, identify speech and language delay at early stage leads to a better result.