Address reading and speaking concerns early to prevent damage to a child’s academic career, say developmental experts at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Drs. Sherry Vinson and Adiana Spinks-Franklin, both assistant professors of pediatrics - developmental pediatrics at BCM, said concerned parents should enroll their infants in an early intervention program if they suspect their child is behind on core developmental milestones such as speech and language.

“Children should meet three key milestones by their first birthday,” said Spinks-Franklin. “They should say one recognizable word, walk one step and follow a one-step command with gesture.”

Behaviors to Watch

Vinson and Spinks-Franklin outlined alarming behavioral characteristics to watch for in children:

- Not responsive to the parent’s command (”sit down”).

- Not self-initiating (saying “mama”) and not following a one-step command given with a gesture (e.g., handing the parent what the child has in his/her hand when the parent holds out a hand and says a command “give that to me”) at one year.

- Not self-initiating conversation, saying approximately 50 words, and spontaneously putting two words together (”go home”) plus following two simple commands put together without gesture (”touch your nose then clap your hands”) at two years.

- Following directions appropriately at one and two years, but not self-initiating the words.

There are significant challenges children with language and speech delays will have later in life if parents do not address the situation, they say. “Language allows them to become strong in so many important areas including academics, reading and social skills,” said Spinks-Franklin. “Children with well-developed language skills are overall more productive and perform much better in school.”

Reading, they say, can be a huge hurdle for these children but it is crucial for them to master. “If you cannot talk, then you cannot read,” said Spinks-Franklin. “These children will have significant reading disorders that will damage their academic career if they are not appropriately addressed at an early age.”

Early Intervention

Many states have resourceful, funded programs that evaluate a child’s strengths and weaknesses and devise a plan for enhancing their skills.

Vinson and Spinks-Franklin, who are also pediatricians at the Meyer Center for Developmental Pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital, refer parents to early childhood education programs available to children from birth to three years-old. The programs help children improve all developmental skills in a natural setting. Kids work with a variety of specialists including, speech pathologists, physical and occupational therapists and social workers and also provide psychological, educational and family support.

“The earlier the parents contact a program, the earlier the child can receive services,” said Spinks-Franklin. She also added that children do not have to be referred by a doctor to qualify for the services. “Concerned parents should call to have their children evaluated by an educational program.”

Clear Benefits

The benefits from evaluation programs are clear, say researchers who have followed the program for years. “Children with developmental delays who are enrolled in an evaluation program perform much better in school than those who are not,” said Spinks-Franklin. “We continue to follow them through elementary school, and they continue to do well when compared to children with developmental delays who do not receive early intervention services.”

Children involved in early intervention programs are more likely to live independently and graduate from high school, said Spinks-Franklin.

Risk Factors

A variety of factors may cause a child’s developmental delay, including genetics, prenatal environment (exposure to tobacco, alcohol or drugs) and premature birth (neurological development occurring outside the womb), they say.

The time it takes to overcome delays depends on the severity of the case. “If a child is challenged in several areas–language, speech, social and motor skills–it is going to take longer to develop language skills than for a child simply dealing with a speech delay,” said Spinks-Franklin.

Parental Participation

Most significant is parental participation. “Most programs make house calls only once or twice a week,” said Spinks-Franklin. “It is the parent’s duty to continue working with their children the rest of the time.”

Spinks-Franklin said parents should actively label their child’s environment by pointing out objects and colors to help develop certain areas of the brain. Another vital exercise for parents is reading to your child, Spinks-Franklin said.

Children over the age of three can be placed in preschool programs before kindergarten and if they continue to need services after preschool, they should receive special education services from the school system. Private speech and language disabilities programs are also available, including a variety of programs from Texas Children’s.

“Early intervention is very beneficial for these children’s overall development and quality of life,” said Spinks-Franklin. “The involvement and commitment from the parents makes this happen.”

Source: BCM News, TX
http://www.bcm.edu/news/item.cfm?newsID=1171

Parents’ interactions with their baby during the first year of life can predict the odds of behaviour problems later on — as can the baby’s natural temperament, research suggests.

The study, which followed nearly 1,900 children from infancy up to age 13, found that children whose mothers gave them plenty of intellectual stimulation in the first year of life — reading to them, talking to them and taking them out of the house — were less likely to have serious behavioural problems.

At the same time, the odds of behaviour problems were also linked to certain measures of the children’s temperament during infancy — such as how “fussy” they were, or whether they had a generally happy or more moody disposition.

The findings suggest that both early parenting style and infant temperament are strong predictors of future behaviour, the researchers conclude in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

The findings also point to the potential benefits of teaching new parents the skills they need, according to the investigators, led by Dr. Benjamin B. Lahey of the University of Chicago.

“The current findings are consistent with the hypothesis that interventions focusing on parenting during the first year of life would be beneficial in preventing future child conduct problems,” the researchers write.

The study involved 1,863 U.S. children and their mothers. When the children were infants, researchers visited their homes and observed their mothers’ interactions with them. Mothers were also interviewed about their babies’ typical temperament.

Overall, Lahey’s team found, babies who were often fussy or had unpredictable behaviour patterns — being hungry or tired at different times each day, for instance — were more likely to have behaviour problems later in childhood.

These problems included things like acting out or cheating at school, lying, bullying other children or disobeying their parents.

In contrast, children who were less fussy and had predictable moods as infants were at “very low risk” of future conduct problems, the researchers report.

A similarly low risk was seen among children whose mothers had provided them with plenty of intellectual stimulation in infancy — by reading to them or taking them out of the house regularly, for instance.

But stimulating activities during infancy might also allow facilitate language development — which makes it easier for children to communicate and socialize.

As for early-life temperament and childhood behaviour, it’s known that both are to some degree determined by genetics, Lahey and his colleagues note.

However, the researchers conclude, “much remains to be learned about the mechanisms through which infant temperament, parenting during infancy, and later conduct problems are related.”

Source: Canada.com, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/5bpqn8

Not long ago, giving children like Ryan a little room would have been routine. Parents of 2-year-olds who were barely saying single words, let alone simple two-word sentences, were reassured that the child would “outgrow it.” Speech therapy was reserved for severely disabled children, such as those with autism or cerebral palsy. But today toddlers who have what developmental specialists call “expressive language delay” are at the center of a heated debate over whether they need speech therapy. Research has shown that early speech and language disorders can lead to later difficulties learning to read, write and spell. As a result, some pediatricians and preschools have abandoned the wait-and-see attitudes and are recommending intervention for children whose language development raises red flags (…). “Now if we see a child faltering at all,” says Jean Mandelbaum, director of All Souls, a Manhattan nursery school, “we recommend an evaluation.” But others see speech-language therapy as unwarranted treatment for a problem that will likely clear up on its own. “It can get them talking a lot faster,” says Grover Whitehurst, a specialist in language delays, “but after a couple of years you can’t tell the difference between kids who had early intervention and kids who did not.”

No one knows why children like Ryan (the majority of late talkers are boys) don’t speak. “It’s often a big mystery,” says Patricia Walsh Kaye, a Manhattan speech-language pathologist. Hearing is an obvious suspect: even mild loss from ear infections can slow comprehension and thus the ability to speak. High-risk pregnancies involving drugs or alcohol interfere with normal brain development. Environment may play a role, too: some children do not speak because nobody speaks to them.

For parents, the mystery is less what caused the problem than how to know when it’s serious. There can be huge variability in speech and language development. By 18 months most children have a vocabulary of about 20 words. By 2 they’re forming two-word sentences (”Mommy juice”). What if the child is nowhere close to passing these milestones? If she shows good comprehension and uses gestures to communicate, she is probably still on target for language development, lack of words notwithstanding. Talking will almost certainly come soon. Doctors’ real concern centers on toddlers who do not understand simple questions or instructions.

Proponents of early intervention worry that kids who appear to be just delayed speakers may end up having more severe speech and language problems later. They’re also concerned that toddlers who are frustrated at not being able to express themselves could develop behavior problems. Denying treatment, they say, is not the answer. “I’d rather err on the side of putting a kid in therapy who might outgrow it,” says Pamela Rollins of the Callier Center for Communication Disorders in Dallas, Texas.

Not all would agree. It is difficult to tell, argue researchers, whether in the long run speech therapy actively helps or simply goes along for the developmental ride. One speech and language specialist, Rhea Paul at Portland State University in Oregon, found that of children under 2 who were not talking, about two thirds showed continued delays at 3. At 4, half did. But by kindergarten 75 percent of the children had caught up with their peers, scoring within the normal range-albeit at the low end-for language expression. “They are making slow progress all along,” says Paul. “It’s likely they will be able to function more or less OK by the time they get to kindergarten–even without intervention.”

The debate is far from over. In the meantime, Malinda Boyd is hoping Ryan will outgrow his problem–and that soon enough he’ll be talking her ear off.

Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/id/95361

Long-term, exclusive breastfeeding appears to improve children’s cognitive development, according to a recent report (Archives of General Psychiatry, May 2008).

Previous studies have reported that children and adults who were breastfed as infants have higher scores on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive (thinking, learning and memory) development than those who were fed formula.

However, the evidence has been based on observational studies, in which children whose mothers chose to breastfeed were compared with those whose mothers chose not to breastfeed. The results of these studies may be complicated by subtle differences in the way breastfeeding mothers interact with their infants, the authors noted.

Michael S. Kramer, MD, of McGill University and the Montreal Children’s Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, and colleagues conducted a randomized trial of a breastfeeding promotion program involving patients at 31 maternity hospitals and affiliated clinics in Belarus.

Between June 1996 and December 1997, clinics were randomly assigned either to adopt a program supporting and promoting breastfeeding or to continue their current practices and policies. A total of 7,108 infants and mothers who visited facilities promoting breastfeeding and 6,781 infants and mothers who visited control facilities received follow-up interviews and examinations between 2002 and 2005, when the children were an average of 6.5 years old.

Mothers who visited a facility promoting breastfeeding were more likely to feed their infants only breast milk at age 3 months (43.3 percent vs. 6.4 percent in the control group) and at all ages through 1 year. At age 6.5, the children in the breastfeeding group scored an average of 7.5 points higher on tests measuring verbal intelligence, 2.9 points higher on tests measuring non-verbal intelligence and 5.9 points higher on tests measuring overall intelligence. Teachers also rated these children significantly higher academically than control children in both reading and writing.

“Even though the treatment difference appears causal, it remains unclear whether the observed cognitive benefits of breastfeeding are due to some constituent of breast milk or are related to the physical and social interactions inherent in breastfeeding,” the authors wrote.

They noted that essential long-chain fatty acids and a compound known as insulinlike growth factor I, both found in breastmilk, could be responsible for the cognitive differences. On the other hand, the physical or emotional component of breastfeeding may lead to permanent changes affecting brain development. Breastfeeding also may increase verbal interaction between mother and child, which could improve children’s cognitive development.

“Although breastfeeding initiation rates have increased substantially during the last 30 years, much less progress has been achieved in increasing the exclusivity and duration of breastfeeding,” the authors concluded. “The consistency of our findings based on a randomized trial with those reported in previous observational studies should prove helpful in encouraging further public health efforts to promote, protect and support breastfeeding.”

The research was funded by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Kramer is the recipient of a Senior Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Co-author Dr. Platt is a Monat-McPherson Career Investigator of McGill Unviersity and a career investigator of the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec. Co-author Dr. Fombonne holds a Canada Research Chair in Child Psychiatry.

Source: Advance for Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists, PA
http://tinyurl.com/49lobn

The National Institutes of Health has awarded the University a $7.7 million, five-year grant to study the development of language among children, in order to better understand how early, preschool development relates to learning how to read.

This study will build on a longitudinal study of 60 children from a diverse set of families who already have participated in an NIH study to examine how they develop language in the home. The researchers also are studying 40 children with brain injuries, who will be followed as they enter school.

“The ability to communicate using language and gestures is a uniquely human capacity,” said Susan Goldin-Meadow, the principal investigator for the study. “All children acquire language, but they do so at different rates. The goal of our project is to explore how environmental and biological factors interact to create these individuals differences. Our aim is to delineate the extent, as well as the limits, of language learning in children,” said Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology and the College.

The research is divided into four planned projects, each under the leadership of a principal investigator.

The first project will examine the effects of environmental variation on language and reading development. Janellen Huttenlocher, the William S. Gray Professor in Psychology, will be the principal investigator for this project. Rebecca Treiman, an expert on reading and the Burke and Elizabeth High Baker professor at Washington University, will work with Huttenlocher.

Huttenlocher and Treiman will look at the development of language in children in different home and school environments to learn more about the role of environment in later language development and entry into reading. Using these data, language growth curves will be constructed for each child to track language development, from the earliest stages through the child’s first years of schooling.

The second project, which Goldin-Meadow will lead, will look at gesture in these children to establish its role in revealing children’s abilities and influencing language growth.

For that project, Goldin-Meadow will explore whether children use their hands to express ideas that they cannot yet express in speech, effectively using gesture to expand their communicative range. The project will also examine individual differences in how children use gesture, focusing on whether those differences predict later language use. Finally, the project will explore whether gesturing plays a role in helping children learn language.

Susan Levine, Professor in Psychology and the College, will lead the third project, which will focus on language and reading development in children with brain injuries to examine the combined effects of biological and environmental variations on learning.

The researchers will examine the plasticity of language and reading skills, studying children ages 5 to 10 who experienced a brain injury before or around the time of birth. By assessing language and reading development in the school year, they will be able to determine whether plasticity for early language extends to reading and more complex language processes. The researchers also will try to determine if environmental variation plays the same role in predicting language growth in brain-injured children as it does in children without a brain injury.

Steven Small, Professor in Neurology, Psychology and the College, is principal investigator for the fourth project, which will look at the brain organization underlying language processing and the effect of environmental and biological variation.

That project will look at the organization of language functions in both typically developing children and children who suffered early brain injuries. Children will have functional brain imaging to evaluate brain development for language and gesture. These fMRI scans will be used to understand how parts of the brain that are used for language interact and adapt as children (with and without brain injuries) refine their language skills and learn to read.

Another important feature of the study is the development of robust statistics to support the work. Stephen Raudenbush, the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology and Chair of the Committee on Education, and Larry Hedges, the Board of Trustees professor of statistics and social policy at Northwestern University, will lead this effort.

Raudenbush pointed out the importance of these projects and the potential for obtaining new information about how children learn.

“This will be the first study to show how language development beginning during the second year of life is linked to the emergence of reading comprehension and oral language that are key to later school success,” he said. “The study will generate new ideas about how to improve preschool and primary school instruction.”

Source: University of Chicago Chronicle
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/080612/nih.shtml

I went to a very good workshop with our children’s librarian, Karen Mills, last week at the Salem Library. It was sponsored through Chemeketa Community Regional Library Service’s Ready-to-Read grant administered through the State Library.

It was titled “Fun and Facts of Early Literacy in Storytime: Partnering with Caregivers for Success.” It was given by Saroj Ghoting who is an early childhood literacy consultant.

As a former children’s librarian, I had been to three or four workshops about the importance of reading to your children early on in their lives. This was the most complete.

Saroj gave us some startling facts, such as: there is nearly a 90 percent probability a child will remain a poor reader at the end of the fourth grade if the child is a poor reader at the end of the first grade. Knowledge of alphabet letters when a child enters kindergarten is a strong predictor of reading ability in 10th grade.

Roughly 35 percent of children in the United States enter school without the skills necessary to learn to read, and one study found the typical middle-class child enters first grade with 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture- book reading, whereas a child from a low-income family averages just 25 hours.

What can a parent or caregiver do to give these children a head start in reading? First, I’m biased when I say bring those preschoolers to storytime at the library.

This is a quote from “Becoming a Nation of Readers”: “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. This is especially so during the preschool years.”

Vocabulary is learned from books more than from normal conversation with adults or children or from television exposure. Don’t wait until the child is ready for school.

I’m not saying that you should teach a child to read before they enter school, but prepare them to get ready to learn to read.

What a parent can do to help get a child be ready to read: talk with your child about what is going on around you. Read together every day. When you talk about the story and pictures, your child hears and learns more words.

Grandparents: you can help too. Read to those precious grandbabies, and pass this column on to your adult children.

Source: Statesman Journal, OR
http://tinyurl.com/6r57te

Young children whose parents read aloud to them have better language and literacy skills when they go to school, according to a review published online ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Children who have been read aloud to are also more likely to develop a love of reading, which can be even more important than the head start in language and literacy. And the advantages they gain persist, with children who start out as poor readers in their first year of school likely to remain so.

The authors explain that the style of reading has more impact on children’s early language and literacy development than the frequency of reading aloud. Middle class parents tend to use a more interactive style, making connections to the child’s own experience or real world, explaining new words and the motivations of the characters, while working class parents tend to focus more on labelling and describing pictures. These differences in reading styles can impact on children’s development of language and literacy-related skills.

The Reach Out and Read programme in Boston has improved the language skills of children in low income families by increasing the proportion of parents reading to their children.

The programme provides books and advice to the parents about the importance of reading aloud. Parents who have been given books were four times more likely to say they had looked at books with their children or that looking at books was one of their child’s favourite activities, and twice as likely to read aloud to their children at least three times a week.

Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080512191126.htm

Children whose fathers are depressed have smaller vocabularies than those who do not, a US study suggests.

But the Eastern Virginia Medical School study of 5,000 families found language development in children whose mothers had similar symptoms seemed unaffected.

Researchers said by the age of two, children with depressed fathers used 1.5 fewer words than the average of 29.

This could be because depressed fathers spent less time reading to their children, they wrote in New Scientist.

The researchers, led by paediatric psychologist James Paulson, surveyed about 5,000 families.

When the children were nine months old, 14% of the mothers and 10% of the fathers were clinically depressed.

The researchers assessed the impact on language development by measuring what proportion of 50 common words the children were using at two years of age.

On average the children in the study were using 29 of the 50 words by the time they reached two.

‘Significant difference’

However, those children whose fathers were depressed when they were nine months old used an average of 1.5 fewer words than those whose fathers were fine.

Dr Paulson said the difference might seem small, but when scaled up across a child’s complete vocabulary it might make a significant difference.

In contrast, there was no difference in the size of the vocabulary of children whose mothers were depressed, and of those whose mothers were not.

The researchers found that depressed mothers did not reduce the amount of time they spent reading to their nine-month-old baby, but depressed fathers read on average 9% less than those who had no problem.

Dr Paulson, who presented the findings to a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, said he hoped the study would encourage depressed fathers to seek help.

He said: “Men may not be likely to seek help for themselves but when other people who depend on them become affected, that may change the landscape.”

Ruth Coppard, a psychologist with an interest in child development, said depressed people tended to withdraw and go quiet, but that women often had no choice, but to continue with child care duties regardless.

BBC News, UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7388367.stm

Over the last decade or so there has been mounting concern about the effect of television and videos on young children.

A huge increase in television programmes now available which are particularly aimed at young infants has occurred, despite warnings from experts that children younger than 2 years should not watch any television at all.

Along with the plethora of such programmes has come more and more evidence of the potential adverse effects of television exposure on young children.

Researchers in the U.S. are now saying because infants in low-income families are watching television or videos, with a supposedly ‘educational’ basis, their mothers rarely speak to them.

Lead author Dr. Alan L. Mendelsohn says many of the programmes marketed as educational have limited data to support such claims and these claims were even less so if no co-viewing with a parent took place.

Dr. Mendelsohn and his colleagues set out to measure the verbal interaction between mother and infants associated with media exposure and maternal co-viewing; to do so they carried out an analysis of 154 low socio-economic status mothers-infant pairs who were taking part in a long-term study on early child development.

It was revealed that over one 24-hour period, 149 of 154 mothers reported that their 6-month-old infants had a total of 426 exposures to television or videos.

These included 139 exposures to educational programs for young children; 46 to non-educational programs for young children; 205 to programs for school-aged children, teenagers or adults; and 36 to unknown programs.

The researchers found that of those 426 television and video exposures, mothers talked to their infants during only 101 of them.

They say their findings support their hypothesis that interactions were most commonly reported in association with educational content, especially programs that had been co-viewed; however half of the exposures consisted of programs not intended for young children.

Even when they were intended for young children they did not involve frequent interactions when they were co-viewed.

The researchers say the findings are important, because parent-infant interactions are associated with long-term developmental-behavioural outcomes and they say verbal exchanges happen more often with reading and playing with toys.

The researchers say given the large amount of media exposure and low verbal interaction, more research is called for to determine whether such media exposure is of benefit to young children.

They say programs with educational content were no more likely to be co-viewed than were other programs and the research does not support the development of infant-directed educational programmes on the basis that they increase co-viewing and interaction.

The study is published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Internal Medicine.

Source: News-Medical.net, Australia
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=38136

A tide of recent research on early childhood development is inspiring prominent scientists and politicians to argue for an unprecedented investment in schooling that begins virtually at birth.

But as decades of academic studies on brain development start to land in the real world, experts are divided on whether to focus new funding on infants and toddlers, or conventional preschool. Many now think some policies popular with politicians and the public, such as universal prekindergarten, may fail to reach at-risk kids at a young enough age.

The scientific controversy also is spilling into the presidential contest, where the Democratic candidates have taken divergent positions on universal preschool and other early childhood issues.

Studies have suggested that intervening before children start preschool improves academic outcomes for low-income kids and may reduce the risk that they will end up in prison. Such interventions stem from the theory that experiences in the first five years of life set a lifelong course for brain development.

Chicago has become a national proving ground for schooling during the first three years and is home to prominent advocates such as Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman of the University of Chicago, who said reaching kids before preschool could offer the best long-term economic return.

“Even at age 4 or 5, you may be starting too late,” Heckman said. “I wouldn’t say it’s hopeless to help kids after those early years, but it’s extremely expensive.”

Backers of universal preschool say the evidence for even earlier intervention is not yet solid and offering conventional prekindergarten to everyone would help build popular support for early education.

In theory, starting to intervene soon after birth should help kids more because that’s when experience starts to shape their brains, many experts said.

Children’s brains change more between conception and kindergarten than at any other time. University of Chicago neuroscientist Peter Huttenlocher showed in studies over the last 30 years that connections between cells in most brain areas peak by age 3, then decline gradually as experiences mold the brain’s circuitry.

The zero-to-3 period is not necessarily a magical and irreplaceable window for teaching children. But studies show that babies raised in poverty get fewer of the early experiences that spur vocabulary growth and good social judgment, making it harder for them to catch up later.

For example, toddlers whose parents speak more words to them develop bigger vocabularies than children who hear less speech, studies have found. One University of Kansas study concluded that kids from upper-income backgrounds hear 30 million more words by age 3 than those from poor families.

Early intervention with enrichment programs can narrow that gap, researchers and advocates say.

“The basic science of brain development says you need to start as early as possible for kids in the greatest danger to get the best outcomes,” said Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California-Berkeley, said he feared focusing on universal prekindergarten — making preschool a middle-class entitlement — could divert help from low-income families that need it most.

“Why would we use scarce public dollars to subsidize all families if we know the biggest impact is with poor kids?” he said.

Source: Detroit Free Press, United States
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080502/NEWS07/805020328