Preterm children often go undiagnosed for speech delay because their language skills are only slightly behind peers, making problems easy to miss. Ming recommends early assessment by speech pathologists and developmental specialists, plus strong parental involvement in intervention.
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. 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 undetected. How can you help? Obviously, early intervention is very, very important. If you have a preterm baby, he or she is at risk. Go see a speech pathologist, go see developmental specialists to get assessment, identify early how well they are on the scale, and then give them appropriate intervention. 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.
