Do "Late Talkers" Really Catch Up?
In preparing to write this blog, I followed my typical process. It began with looking at the common questions we receive at Seagull Speech and Language Services from our parents. We often hear questions about online speech therapy for kids, and how we can help.
When I was researching the topic of late talkers, I found that about twenty years ago, many of the mainstream articles mentioned that most children who are “late talkers” catch up.
This leads us to the question, “what is a late talker”? According to the Hanen Centre, late talkers are defined as “toddlers under 30 months who have a small vocabulary for his or her age” but the other areas of development are progressing as expected.
As I continued researching different articles, I found that about ten years ago more research was released that showed although 70-80% of late talkers seemed to catch up by the time they entered school, these late talkers may continue to demonstrate weaknesses when compared to peers.
When this group of former “late talkers” are tested their general language skills are found to be within the normal range. When taking a closer look at their skills, these students may still have some deficits in vocabulary, grammar, phonological development, reading, writing, and listening comprehension skills. This equates to students not quite meeting the criteria to receive extra support at school through special education but they often would benefit from intervention.
Other children don’t seem to demonstrate any weaknesses in academic skills but have difficulty interacting socially with peers. They also may demonstrate poor executive functioning skills. Executive functioning skills are crucial in a young child’s ability to plan, organize, and self-regulate. When watching children together at recess on the playground, you can often see children with poor executive functioning skills as they may not understand how to initiate an interaction with a peer appropriately and they demonstrate poor impulse control. This leads other children to choose to play with other children when “Johnny” always seems to be unpredictable in his behavior when playing.
One activity parents can do to help their children when their vocabulary may be limited is to take a look at their child’s interests. I find many of my toddler boy students love dinosaurs.
Based upon this interest, you can choose ten target words to focus on while playing with dinosaurs. Many of the formal dinosaur names are multisyllable words, so they can be challenging. I have seen students with a limited vocabulary successfully produce “stegosaurus” though because they are highly motivated to say the word!
It may be a better approach to focus on things that the dinosaurs can “do” which you can use naturally through interactions and play. When the core target words being addressed are used in this manner, the child is more likely to remain engaged and use more words during their interactions and play.
Our team of speech and language pathologists at Seagull Speech and Language services are able to provide speech therapy telemedicine to assist parents when children may be slower to increase their vocabulary and use words to communicate their needs. Telehealth speech therapy is a fantastic way to assist late talkers in expanding their vocabulary through play-based intervention!