In Conclusion

The causes and commons symptoms of late speaking children are still being researched and updated, but there are some patterns that have been found. I was surprised that there were findings refuting a connection language delays and low birth weight children and social economic status, and was interesting to discover such factor liks being male, being a younger sibling (for male children), how interactive your parents are, and the educational status of the mother only can affect the chances of a child developing language delays. Language development issues can also be symptoms to other issues such as autism and Fragile X Syndrome. Finding out if a child having language problems in a tricky, especially during earlier years- there are few consistent differences between a young child that has LDD and one that is merely a late bloomer.

Video Round Up

I ran across some videos:

Here is an average three year old. You can hear her give her version of some jokes.



Here is a video of a child of similar age that has autism, who is just starting to make speech sounds.



And I ran across a long but informative and interesting speech discussing the language development of children with Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), based off of the University of California Television website.

Learning Objectives

Some of what I hope people will learn from this blog:

-Approximately when and if a child is showing signs of late speaking, and the natural variation of when children learn language.
-What are some of the causes of late speaking children.
-What are some things parents could do if their child is showing signs of late speaking.

A Couple of More Websites...

I've ran across a parenting site giving the timetable the warning signs you should start looking for if you believe your child is having speech delays. I myself still have yet to be fully understandable at 4 years, which bought about me seeing a speech therapist at the beginning of my school age.

http://www.babycenter.com/0_warning-signs-of-a-toddlers-language-delay_12293.bc

The other was an interesting piece on figuring out the difference between a child that is having speech delays or a child that is just a late bloomer. There's not much in concrete symptoms separating the two, but it says that child that is more likely to be a late bloomer would use more gesters, understand speech at a pretty normal rate, and should have continuous, if a bit delayed, progress in language.

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/LateBlooming.htm

Fragile X Foundation Website

I found a website that discusses late speaking in boys due to fragile x syndrome. Fragile X syndrome is the most common cause of autism in children. It affects about 1 in 3600 males and 1 in 5-6000 females, with males typically showing the more severe symptoms in cognitive, physical, and mental development.

Males that have Fragile X will typically have some kind of speech development delay, and is usually one of the first signs that a child may have Fragile X. The amount of speech delay and language complications vary from child to child. Female children tend to not be affected in acquiring language, but may have a problem with conversational skills or pragmatics.

http://www.nfxf.org/html/late-speaking.htm

Journal References

My three articles can be found in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research and written throughout the year 2007. The first two were interested in finding correlations and causations with small children with late language development, and the last one is interested in finding the differences between typically developing and late language children and how they interpret language.

The first article wanted to see if there was a correlation between language delay and behavior problems in toddlers. There wasn't really any strong corrections, especially after they took out the cases where the child had symptoms of autism, with the exception of late language development and Withdrawal, which can be explained by children that have expressive language issues are more likely to shy away from social activities.

As a child who developed later than normal language-wise up through kindergarten, I did keep to myself, but I also was seperated by my poor vision, a unquieness that I was way more self-conscious about than my random, if recurring, moments of awkward communication.

Reference: Rescorla, L, and GS Ross, and S McClure. "Language delay and behavioral/emotional problems in toddlers: findings from two developmental clinics". Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. Aug 2007, 1063-78.

The second article was a more general look into the possible causes and correlations that can be found in children with Late Language Development (LDD). They looked from a large sample of Austrailian children and looked at a variety of factors, focusing on maternal background and family environment. There were some interesting findings, including that the economic level of the mother does not predict LDD in children, but the type of parental behavior, the existence of siblings, family history, and whether the child is male does. They also are leaning towards genetic and neurobiological factors determining a child's language development.

The article references birth weight and Apgar scores a couple of times, and according to this article the connection to low birth rate and language development is inconsistent. I wasn't premature but I was a lightweight baby, around 5lbs 6oz. I have a brother, but I'm the oldest child, and this article believes younger siblings are more likely to be affected by LDD; my overall behavior is overall inconsistent with the typical behaviors of the oldest child.

Reference: Zubrick, Stephen R, and Catherine L. Taylor. Late language emergence at 24 months: epidemiological study of prevalence, predictions, and covariates. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Dec 2007. 1562-92.

The third article went to compare lexical and grammatical development between late language development and typically developing children. They hypothesize that both normal and late developing children develop the same in lexical growth but will see differences in syntactic development. The findings varied, some supporting the original hypothesis and some less so. They were also trying to see whether children develop language through bidirectional bootstrapping.

References: Moyle MJ, SE Weismer, JL Evans, MJ Lindstrom. Longitudinal relationships between lexical and grammatical development in typical and late-talking children. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. April 2007. 508-28.