As a parent, one of your biggest concerns is making sure that your child is developing normally in every respect. Speech and language development is always one of the first concerns a parent has. You fully expect your little one to be cooing and babbling by their first year mark and maybe even saying simple words in reference to things they recognize. However, there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to delayed speech development that could be making you worry more than what is necessary. Here are a few of the biggest myths about delayed speech in young children and the actual facts you need to know.
Myth: Your child should develop speech and language at about the same rate as their siblings.
Fact: Siblings do not always develop speech and language skills at the same rate for a host of different reasons. So just because your one-year-old is hardly saying anything when his or her older sibling was babbling away by the same age, it does not necessarily mean that there is something seriously wrong. Children always learn at different rates and there are also other factors to consider when it comes to siblings, such as the fact that there may be changes in how much one-on-one interaction you have with concurrent little ones in comparison to the youngest.
Myth: Having an older sibling should help your child learn to speak sooner.
Fact: It is true that some children will learn a lot from their older siblings when it comes to speech and language. However, in some cases, having an older sibling can slow speech progression. For example, if an older sibling is not speaking clearly, the younger sibling may mimic their sibling's spoken words more so than the correct words spoken by adults in the household. Therefore, even if your child starts to speak sooner, they could speak less clearly than they would if they did not have older siblings.
Myth: If one of your children has a speech impediment, siblings are likely to as well.
Fact: This is not always the case with siblings. Speech impediments can be caused by an array of genetic and biological factors. You may have one child who has a delayed speech response and a second who has no issues at all. Of course, it is always a good idea to be on the lookout for speech problems with concurrent siblings, but they may not always show the same problems. Contact a speech language pathologist for more info.
Share26 April 2016
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