Preterm Babies and Speech Delay

Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com today we're going to talk about preterm babies or preterm children. Whether if speech and language would be affected. So the obvious answer is yes. Okay, the obvious answer is obviously yes. But there are always anomalies, meaning there are people who exist outside of this example. Right. So there are preterm babies who develop speech and language very typically, very step by step and they don't miss any milestones and so on. That does happen. I've seen it multiple times at the same time. The risk is a risk factor. And what I mean by risk factor is that because they are preterm, they are at risk for other things. For instance, some people are born at risk of diabetes or like me, short sighted. Preterm children are at risk for a whole bunch of things. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm a speech therapist. I'm not here to give medical advice. But there are children are, who are preterm will be at risk for things outside of speech and language. Okay. And those things might in turn actually affect their social interaction, number one. Number two is the development of muscles and speech and so on might be affected and in turn will affect their language as well. Okay, so let's talk about whether they will catch up or not. Obviously they need some time to catch up, but how long? So I want to link this study down below. It says that preterm babies don't catch up, not even at school age. So let's say that school age is defined by when they get into elementary or primary school. Okay. So when they get to that age, they still haven't totally 100% caught up. Okay, so how do you help with that? Nowadays we have a lot more individual needs or special needs programs in schools. Right. So that will help a lot in the school setting because someone is actually helping them along the way. But and obviously preterm children in general, they are less identified because they're not really that much behind than a lot of typically developing children. You're not talking about children who are on the spectrum, children who have adhd, children who have whatever. It's just someone who hasn't had 100% when they were born. And therefore they don't have as much language skills as someone of their age. Right. That's why they're undetective. The number one thing that determines whether a child would develop fast and catch up or not. Right. So as much language skills as someone of their age. Right. That's why they're undetected relatively when I say that, oh, there's a lot more good programs about individual needs, special needs or whatever. Preterm children usually don't qualify for those. They're good enough. That's all you will see a little drop or significant enough drop for their, you know, receptive language, meaning how much they can understand the reading and writing and also phonological awareness, which means how well they can identify sounds and use sounds in a proper way for their language. Right. So some children will mix up some word I have a friend who makes itself the l and the Y in Cantonese because their phonological awareness isn't that great for the, for Chinese. Okay. And also you will see a low drop in grammar abilities and all this adds up to like a lower academic performance and so on and so forth. Right? So anyways, how can you help? So obviously early intervention is very, very important. If you have a preterm baby, he or she is at risk, right? Go see a speech pathologist, go see developmental specialists to get a assessment done. Identify early how well they are on the scale. Right? And then give them appropriate intervention. Okay. And the most important thing is that the parents do more of the intervention. Parent involvement, as we always say here on agents of speech, is that is the most important thing. That's why we're making this videos for you, right? We don't need more videos for therapists and, and professionals. There are loads outside. But for parents, I believe it's really crucial for language development, especially for pre terms because sometimes they don't even qualify for the amount of the help that they need because obviously there are a lot more people, a lot more children who need more help than they do. Okay, so that's all for this video. If you want to read the reference, it's down below in the description. And if your child is hand pulling you at around the age of 2 to 3, you should go to agentsofspeech.com handpulling I'll put the link below in the description. And it's a free guide, a five minute activity you can do at home for five to 10 minutes and you should go there and check it out. Okay, so that's all for this video and I hope to see you in the next video soon. Bye bye.