The silent kids

Working with kids, I permanently face three main problems that parents of young children most worry about: a speech delay problem, a behavior problem and a communication problem. Today, I want to talk about the first one. The rest two will be discussed later.

Currently, the speech delay is an increasingly acute problem. Quite often, it walks together with the communication problem, regardless of what has started first: they are often inextricably linked. But there are cases with speech production disorders that begin in early childhood.

I am not going to talk much about the speech disorders caused by brain damage. Such children need the specific help of specialists, and I wouldn’t like to discuss this big and complicated topic. However, I will mention some of this information here.

My discussion is devoted to the speech delay caused by parents’ actions (lack of their actions, to be more precise). But in most cases, speech therapists can help such children to start their speech production if it is not too late and parents diligently follow the doctors’ instructions. But the most important thing is that parents can prevent this problem, but not all of them do because it is plenty of hard work.

Analyzing the stories of parents from different countries, I detected some widespread similarities that united the complaining parents: poor watchfulness and lack of communication between these parents and their babies. I figured that in the countries where people have a short maternity leave, parents have less time to interact with their babies. Usually children stay with grandparents or babysitters.

In Russia, women can stay at home until their babies get 3 years old. A half of this term is paid what means that one of two parents can take this leave and stay at home for 1.5 years – the most important age for child development.

Exploring a bit more, I realized that although Russian parents stay at home with their babies, nowadays the situation with speech delay in this country has also worsened. Online life made us more busy and silent.

Don’t rely on "God of Speech"

Generally, babies are able to (do not have to) start speaking their first words from 8 to 12 month. It should be clarified that they make their first attempts to speak by imitation the sounds they heard. Some of 1-year-old toddlers are able to use the first words properly and consciously.

But you should understand that it is not a pattern your baby should match to, and at the same time, if your baby doesn’t try pronounce any sound or word at this age, it is better notice that fact and monitor its speech development.

The primary words of infants are simple and include several sounds or syllables such as “ma” or “mom”, “da(d)”, “give”, “yum”, “yuck”, “yep”, “no”, “bye” and so on. They are usually addressed to parents to convey children’s needs or attract parent’s attention. But anyway, the start begins much earlier with cooing or some “animal sounds”.

By the way, this is the best time to show your kids the letters making the sounds which children have begun cooing. For example, when my 9-month son started saying “s” imitating a snake, I showed him the letter S and repeated the sound. We did it with each letter of a new sound he had mastered. Moreover, this method may help to detect or prevent the articulation distortion and speech therapy.

Now my first son is 5 and he is good at math, easily masters languages, speaks Russian, English and Chinese, can read and write in English and Russian.

He has started reading and writing at 2-3.

Now he is mastering Chinese writing.

His 3-year-old brother follows the same path.

I’m showing these pictures to demonstrate how far you can train children’s brain. I don’t want to make them wunderkinds, of course, otherwise, by this time we could have achieved better results…

I just know that all the parts in our brain are interconnected. As a result of permanent learning and training from birth, most of the engaged brain cells stay alive, grow, and are developed. In a contrast, all the uninvolved cells will likely atrophy.

Constant brain training can help my children learn anything faster in the future, having the received and mastered knowledge and experience. Given that children’s memory and children’s brains are most flexible before age 7. After this milestone, changes are already underway.

I don’t want to say that their brains are getting worse, but the qualities of how it assimilates are noticeably inferior to the brain until the age of 7. It’s mainly connected with their maturity and new interests. I carefully observe the children I work with.

Well, good results of learning in early childhood show the ability of children to quickly and successfully master and develop everything that surrounds them. But who taught them to read and write? Parents or teachers did. They showed how and what.

The speech formation situation is exactly the same. Thus, if nobody talks to kids and nobody shows how and what to speak, children will never start speaking without our help because they don't know how to do. If there is no input, you cannot get any output. In the meantime, if your speech is poor, the speech of your baby cannot skyrocket without supplemental help (for example, reading).

Do not rely on society and automatic punching as a result of maturation. There were even well known researches of orphans and their natural speech delay. Have you ever heard about “mowgli kids”? There are famous cases when children lost the ability to speak due to a super poor speaking environment they had had until the age of five-six. But those were dysfunctional families.

Nonetheless, I know some private cases where the parents did not care too much about speech formation, thinking that the offspring were still too young. These parents were expecting an automatic leap forward. As a result, these children will never start their speech as ordinary people on a par with the “mowgli kids” from the dysfunctional families. Speech therapy is a complex, lengthy and expensive procedure.

What’s the root cause?

I wouldn’t like to debate dysfunctional families, because, in my opinion, babies from there can be compared to orphans, and their speech delay is an obvious problem. But I will take into account statistically average families.

The speech delay often happens in usual families, too. It caused by different factors. Some of them are physical factors, and it may be difficult perinatal period: infections, disorders, injuries and hypoxia during childbirth, also postpartum injuries and infections. If parents have experienced these problems, they should closely monitor the health and development of their babies. Such kids should daily get intensive exercises from the birth even if they look like usual kids.

In the vast majority of cases, parents just let the situation go, loosing time, because they see nothing strange happening with their kids. People around tell the myths that «kids will certainly speak no matter what», reinforcing the stereotypes with examples from their real life. This illusion brings poor watchfulness of parents.

Some families may suffer internal difficulties and they don't find time to take a closer look at their babies. In addition, if there is complicated relationship between its members, toddlers’ development is influenced by behavior of their nervous and depressive parents. The worst thing is that sometimes we can't realize the toxic problem that exists inside the family hearth.

All of us who went through a birth of a baby know how happy we were at the very beginning, when all our exhaustion was covered with oxytocin (the hormone), and how hard it was later, when the reserve and release of the hormone reduced (balanced), opening our eyes and facing real life with dreamless nights, endless crying, diets, pediatrician and a long list of responsibilities (including being a wife). And that's just the tip of the iceberg that every family faces.

Some people continue working after getting birth, and they still have domestic and household business to do. But, in fact, this time-eating business and problems are inflated due to the inability to organize thoughts, feelings, themselves.

We see a happy family walking outside, but inside of their house is hot and depressing. These children are hostages of the situation. Two adults are constantly solving problems suddenly fallen from the sky. Therefore, they not only reduce any games and talks with their babies, but also rarely smile, quite often shout, and get annoyed about anything.

Do I need to tell you how harmful it is to put all your internal problems on your baby? This is a suppressor of any motivation not only to start talking, but in general to develop and investigate this world. Such parents need an urgent head & life revision and a specialist who can help to realize it.

OK, it is calm and windless in your family, but anyway, perhaps your schedule is chaotically spread, or just you sacrifice most of your time for the business, for yourself, but not for your kids. And I can understand why.

It is difficult and boring for human’s brain to constantly repeat the same things and do not see the results (respond) straight away. It is incredibly difficult to maintain your interest while talking to a baby, hooting and reading fairy tales, when it does not seem to be listening, looks at the ceiling and tries to grab a toy lying beside. At the same time parents have a lot of the most important things to do.

That’s why parents don’t like (= don’t want) to speak or play with their kids (especially with new born babies), considering this case silly and inefficient because their infants understand and respond nothing. “Well, it has to wait for better times…” Our brain builds convenient theories justifying our actions. You must be highly motivated to do that.

Some families have a babysitter. Is she highly motivated to speak with your child? I’m not sure. Lack of communication between adults and children (especially in one-kid-families) delay and degrade speech development of the children.

People have stopped talking with each other, drowning in smart phones and laptops. They give these appliances to their children as well, thinking they will learn something from the machines. But it doesn’t happen. On the contrary, it’s getting even worse.

Let me say a few harsh words. People are getting lazy and slack. Plenty of parents (including grandparents), some pediatric specialists, teachers, babysitters and other people which are directly related to children are so irresponsible and inattentive to childen sometimes! Nobody of them wants to notice that something wrong happens with their children. They are focused on providing safety, food and care, thinking that teaching children to speak is already secondary.

I have already mentioned about the thousands attempts of children to start talking. At the beginning, they try telling us by gestures and babbling what they want to get. What do some parents (or some babysitters) do? They run at breakneck speed for the toy as soon as their babies pointed at it.

Such adults don’t give a chance to speak or get motivated to speak. Giving everything their kids want, they forget about another important and also primary thing that babies need - their development. Children speak with gestures and babbling until they get 3 or sometimes even more. In this case, there is a reason to think of whether everything is all right with your baby if it says only three words at the age of 3. “It’s OK!” people say. No, it’s not OK when your baby says absolutely nothing at 2-3 years old!

People tend to turn a blind eye to signals and symptoms, calming themselves with "waiting”. Hurry parents don’t want to wait for a word from their baby here and now, they don’t want to make efforts to help the baby say its first word, but they are glad to wait forever for the problem to be solved by itself without their efforts.

Of course, most of parents just don’t know what is going on in baby’s head, at what age toddlers can start talking, and adults get used to thinking that children are still young if they cannot speak so far. Parents have no idea how it works!

How it works.

1. Infant’s brain

An infant’s brain has a large number of neurons and goes through the levels (stages) of improvement. Today, a new born baby sees nothing but shadows because of its untrained neural connections. But in a month or two, it can already recognize outlines and shapes. Neural connections are formed like muscle tissues: the more training, the faster growth and mastering.

When our eldest son turned one month old, we hung simple black and white pictures around his cot. He watched them curiously and turned his head to look over all of them. It is one of the ways to stimulate baby’s neurons from birth.

There are some picture examples below.

We did a lot and worked hard with our children (which I can tell about later), and now, over the years, we can see the results of our work. Even such simple work together as building with lego blocks, clay molding, books reading, singing, dancing, music listening, and painting gave to my sons a lot of improvement.

Their capability, success and speed of mastering are obviously higher than many other children do. Absolutely the same things happen with those children whose parents take proper care of their development and education.

Speech production and comprehension are very complex processes. They rely on the several brain segments where the Broca’s area, the Wernicke's area, and the angular gyrus are the superior parts. But they also involve auditory cortex, visual cortex, motor cortex and so on. All these parts must be developed and well stimulated for good speech development.

All the words that you say to your baby are processed by its brain, causing the stimulation of neurons. As a result of the neuron stimulation, neural connections are created, and parts of the brain are connected to each other. By this, everything that children interact with from birth stimulates neurons and boosts brain development. Non-stimulated neurons atrophy over time.

2. Listening

Essentially, any language learning begins with listening. In baby’s small head, a rich sound world unfolds which they have to deal with! Learning mother-tongue language at the very beginning, the brain trains to recognize tone, speech and isolate segments.

Listening skills start developing in a womb. The inner ear connects with neurons in the brain that are responsible for processing sounds. By the 24th week, through the amniotic fluid, your baby hears muffled sounds coming from outside and your voice reverberating through your body and your bones.

There are studies (University of British Columbia) in which neonates (at the age of 0-3 days) reacted to the speech in a language heard in the womb and did not respond to the surrogate language. This study proved that the prenatal experience with the native language gained in a womb influences how the newborn brain responds to language across brain regions sensitive to speech processing. The brain is highly specialized to respond to speech, showing activation in anterior temporal regions.

What can it tell us? Talking to a fetus in the womb in the third trimester stimulates the necessary areas of the baby’s brain, preparing in advance a favorable environment for future language acquisition.

Thus, even though your infants understand and respond nothing now, talking to them isn’t silly! Talking to them is highly efficient! Even when they are in the womb. Along with that, this is the first step of parents to make talking with kids habitual.

3. First comprehension and word

After your baby sees better (the development of the visual cortex takes place), every heard word backed up with experienced emotions clings to a seen image (or action) and accumulate in Wernicke's area which is responsible for speech interpretation (comprehension). That's why sometimes, when children can't speak yet, they obviously can understand commands and recognize objects, pointing at them.

Young babies learn like Pavlov's dogs. Roughly speaking, each time you daily call your baby's name, the baby receives your attention immediately after its brain hears your voice. Getting this signal many times, the infant will learn that after it hears its name (it’s just a sound for him, of course) parents will show up. It works the same way when babies cry and their parents immediately run up. This is a kind of primary communication. If parents don’t run up immediately, crying increases.

Let me give you another example. Playing with your baby, you say “dog” or “woof” showing a dog toy or picture. After the repetition of this act, one day, your baby, hearing the sound learned from you, will point at the dog toy or will try pronouncing the word or sound of this animal. A brain needs permanent repetition of sounds and actions to put information in long term memory. Therefore, repetition of different “audio materials” with its presentation and acting out is so important!

The next step to speech (baby’s speaking) goes through the Broca’s area which is mainly responsible for speech production and directly connected to the motor cortex. It starts working after the “bridge” between the Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas is set. If there is something wrong with these areas or the bridge, you will see obvious disorders of children’s speech.

A baby hears a dog barking, “Oh, look! It’s a dog!” parents would say when a cute dog runs up. The baby feels excitement watching the dog. Parents repeat: “Dog! Such a cute dog!”, and so on. This moment will be instantly processed and recorded in parts of the baby’s brain.

The next time, when the connections between brain parts have successfully trained and set, the Broca’s area will signal the motor cortex to move the mouth, and your baby will say its first word instead of pointing, as it was before. That’s why it is so important to stimulate the motor cortex with fine motor exercises.

It takes some time for the child's brain to recognize and remember the received sounds, but this happens far earlier than you may have expected. The more often kids receive signals, the faster they master them and take another step towards the speech development.

As they grow older, all the signals (sounds), babies have heard, will turn into words with meaning. And one day, after thousands attempts, your baby will say its first word (but not always the most frequently heard). I mean meaningful, motivated, directed to parents. Your baby will try saying the word “dog” or “woof” willing to get its favorite toy dog.

However, you should remember that in order to say something your baby must be motivated with a reason. As usual, kids don’t have any difficulty with motivation in the beginning. Communication is vital for us and we have already been born with this option. But over time, a bad environment adapts brains and thus babies lose their willing to speak (nobody speak with, nobody shows how, parents understand without words and so on).

Meanwhile, every child has its own abilities and genetic features which we should take into account, too. Simply saying, one brain needs short time to set up the connections between its parts and another does this a bit longer, and needs more help and practice, but as it is well known, the basic skills mastering should take place in a certain period of time without a large deviation (not too late).

Even sometimes, if there is something that mastered ahead (too early), it may be a bad influence on baby’s health (for example, early walking bends immature toddler’s legs, making them “round” like a wheel). If the deviation occurs, it should be identified and examined by a pediatrician.

Four combinations

There are four combinations that can help easier understand what happens with your child's speech. Take a look at the scheme below.

The fields A and B are for the children who want (A) and don’t want (B) to speak. The other two are for the children who can speak (1), and who cannot (2).

So, A1 is a healthy group without any troubles with speech formation. They want and can speak; they master speaking skills in a right time mostly without any distortion and disorders.

A2 is a group where the children want to speak but cannot. Sometimes it is because they need some “push” for their brain. But mainly it occurs because of their brain disorders such as aphasia (e.g. Broca’s area damage or neuron atrophy) or problems with articulation (i.e., rhinolalia).

Good and competent speech therapy can help if the case isn’t totally hopeless. However, I know some particular cases when the children hadn’t talked till they got 7 and began saying some simple sounds and combinations after competent speech therapy.

The B1 group is for children who don’t want to speak but can (i.e. mutism). They are close to A2 group. Basically, such children have no physical violations and obstacles, they are ready to speak, but they have their own ideas and psychological difficulties to give up speaking. This happens as a result of psychological traumas and adverse environmental factors, complexes about something, fear, excessive or insufficient parental care, etc.

These children need help of a psychologist, change the current environment, change parental attitude and behavior, and so on, depending on the reason which should be identified by a specialist. But anyway, this case is easier to solve unlike the previous one.

The hardest case is B2. These children don’t want and cannot speak at the same time. They combine a complex of psychological and physiological problems. Such children urgently need competent complex therapy, including the diligent assistance of parents at home.

By looking at these four groups, you can see if your child is willing and able to speak or not. You should closely observe your child, noticing every tiny moment and assessing its potential. You can write down all the observations you caught and tell your doctor about them.

Conclusion

What can you do to help your child get healthy development? First of all, you should be more attentive to your kid. Of course, the situation may be much more complicated and each case should be considered separately but there are recommendations that you could follow to prevent speech delay and help your kid get healthy development.

• You should talk to your baby from the moment of its birth. But speak easier, slowly and without permanent teeny-weeny words and voice. It is unnatural and scary for infants: you talk so strangely to your baby, but you talk differently to others.
• Try to show pictures and toys every day, naming each object you show. We used finger-toys of animals (puppets), hung black-and-white pictures around the baby’s cot.
• Reading books with big pictures is really helpful and beneficial.
• Playing with your baby (role play with toys or costumes and active games with outcries) can be a pattern and activate an interest to speak. Having played a puppet theater, children will most likely want to try playing on their own and speak for puppets.

• You should make your child move a lot, exercise, swim, do fine motor exercises. The motor cortex is associated with speech and needs stimulation.
• Under your strict supervision, you could play with small objects, building blocks or mold in polymer clay figures together with your kid, developing motor skills.
• You should avoid your baby always using mime, gestures and “animal language”. It is better to motivate and stimulate their speech. Practice giving a toy to your toddler after it asks for that by saying. You may ask someone from your family to show the example.
• It is better to avoid complex and long words. It is much easier for children to say "dog" than "doggie".
• Try to let your kid interact with others. More talking people around (adults or kids) set an example for a growing baby. If a family is not sociable, a child imitating his parents is likely to be silent. You may visit some public places or events, ask your babysitter talk more with your child, read books.

• It would be better to arrange your schedule in such a way that can give you more free time to interact with your child. Reducing social media scrolling can also help.
• You should also reduce giving your child smart appliances. Or you could do it together discussing and explaining everything in it.
• If pediatricians or teachers advice you to pay attention to your baby’s lack of speech, it is better to be more attentive and check whether everything is right or not. There are many ways to inspect.
• At the same time, if you see that something goes wrong (your kid speaks poorly at 3 or doesn’t speak at all) and specialists say “wait”, it is better to check and make sure, insist on seeing other doctors (a speech therapist, a neurologist, a psychologist). Some parents identified the speech problem at the very beginning (one-year-olds) and could prevent the risk of muteness.
• If you have a diagnosis and your child doesn’t speak, you mustn’t give up. Try your best to find a specialist who can help you. But you also must be ready for hard and long work.

Speech is one of the most important tools for a meaningful life. You can speak, walk, think, live and so on. Your parents raised you be healthy, developed, gave you abilities to get a good life. Why don’t you want to give the same to your children? Don't they deserve? Don't deprive your children of this chance to get this precious tool! Right now, you can still gift them a chance to get a better life than you have.

Don’t be selfish.