3 Reasons Why Your Child is Speech Delayed
Speech therapist Ming breaks down three common causes of speech delay: a language-poor environment, autism spectrum disorder, and unknown developmental issues. She explains how to build a language-rich home and what to do when the cause isn't clear.
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Hey, this is Ming here, speech therapist from agentsofspeech.com we're going to talk about three reasons why your child is speech delayed. Number one is a language poor environment. So if you've watched Tarzan as a kid like I did, then you will know if no one speaks the language around you, you won't be able to pick up language. Okay. And there are studies throughout probably the last 20 years is that they see children who are in social, economic, different socioeconomic classes, higher and lower. Is that higher socioeconomic classes because they have more chances of education and listening to people and going to school and going to different activities. The spoken language and written language are a lot better than those their counterparts and lower socioeconomic classes. Right. And that's just the reality of which, right. If you are in the environment in the vicinity of like people who speak very well, then the chances of you speaking well and learning the language will increase as well. Okay? So that's number one. So if you're thinking about how to improve your child's language is always to give provide a language rich environment. Right? And the reason why sometimes like you hear in this channel or somewhere else, you say cut off screen time. And the reason is because when you're having screen time, is that a language rich environment or not? Right. Your child is bombarded with words and, and songs and, and sentences and stories. Yes. But at the same time, the function of language is to communicate. So if they learn all these language parts like Lego bricks and they don't know how to use it, then it's still a language poor environment. Okay. Doesn't mean that they're able to use it. Well, you know, if, if you can't use it, then you're not rich. You know, same as money. It's the same as language. You can't use your language. It's the language poor. So that's the reason behind it. That's why we always say cut the screen time and have quality time with the child. And that means if you search on YouTube, you go like language facilitation skills, right? It's not like, not only the videos from me, like just language facilitation just works so you can watch other therapists talking about it. It doesn't need to be me and learn those skills about it to help your child. So language poor environment. Very, very important reason about why your child is speech delay. Number two is autism spectrum disorder. So asd, short for that. And the reason why it becomes, so to speak, speech delay, it's not really speech delay. We talked about this before in a video. It's actually language delay because autism spectrum sort asd, people on the spectrum, so to speak, they have a problem understanding why they should talk to us, right? I'm saying they and us, because literally it's neurod divergent and we're neurotypical, right? So between people like us, neurotypical people like us, and people who are on the spectrum, they do not understand why we have to communicate when they can have all the food, all the shelter, everything, you know, given to them. There's no other need. And they don't really like when people say ASD children do not enjoy playing or do not enjoy hanging out with us, that's not necessarily true. It's like they just don't understand why and they don't understand how. It's like adding value to their lives. And therefore they would much rather play and think on their own, right? And therefore when they have that mindset, it's very difficult for them to develop a higher language skill, right? Because if they're not interested, they don't know why. And using that language, why would they learn it? Right? You've seen a lot of maybe Chinese looking people in America, or vice versa. You see some Americans in my hometown, Hong Kong, they don't speak a word of the local language. And the reason is because it's the same. Their function and their like, their desires and wants do not align with the effort for learning the language. And therefore they would be delayed or they won't learn the language. Right? So it's the same thing, but we have to think it in a different way. All right? So the second reason is about asd, okay. And the third reason is that there's no particular reason. And all these speech and language problems, it could be developmental. And to this day, we still do not know why. All right? And even if we knew why, it doesn't mean we can solve it. So I see a lot of parents, they jump through a lot of hoops and they say, like, oh man, look, I've jumped through so many hoops, I've been trying so hard. Like, I want to know why, what's going on? A parent recently told me, oh, my, my kid has some sort of like heavy metal poison or like, it's a slightly higher heavy metal number, okay? And they were saying, is it possible that my child is speech delayed because of this? And my response is maybe, I don't know, probably. I really don't know. Ask a doctor. But at the same time, you have to think about like, if this is the reason, solving it will actually lead to better language. And most of the time the answer is still maybe we still don't know. So given that we don't know the reasons why, all we can do is to teach language one by one. The reasons about why they have to learn how to communicate, how to imitate us, how to take turns, how to wait. All these we have to teach the kid so that even if they don't feel good, they can still have a way out. Okay, so it's a very important concept for you to understand that even if we knew the reason, we cannot solve it, there might be some part of the brain that isn't developing the way it should be. It's like firing in a different way. All these things we know. So what? We cannot change the brain structure, right? Same as like a genetic disorder. What we can do is only we can cope, right? We can use behavioral tactics to cope. And behavioral tactics are the only ways that I can teach you about. For a child between like 2 to 6 years old, if we're talking about older, we can start using other therapy techniques. Teaching them cognitive rules, right? Telling them a cognitive level means that we're teaching them something that is above behavior and teaching them how to think, how to use structures, how to use a framework for them to think about how they should go about the world, which is still coping. Because most of the time we cannot change the fundamentals. So why care about the reason? Okay. Unless there's something we can do about it. It's not like it's a curved spine or whatever, that you can do exercises to alleviate that. Right. And cure it and go back to quote, unquote normal. We're not going to do that. Right. The only thing we can do for speech and language delayed children is to teach them the baseline of this language skill and their social language play, whatever, all those skills up the baseline and also teach them how to cope whenever they're too stressed in an environment that they require to perform. Okay, so that's the end of this video. Thank you so much for watching. And if you haven't, Please go to agentsofspeech.com checklist if you want to start home therapy to Today, we have a list of tools and toys that will tell you exactly what to get. And we're going to update that checklist so that there are some videos about, like, some instructions at the very least telling you how to use those tools. Okay, thank you so much. I'll see you in the next video. Bye. Bye.
