From the Tonight programme featured on ITV – On 24 November 2008

On Monday the ITV programme “Tonight” looked into the question as to why so many children were starting school with poor language skills.

It featured a young boy called Riley, aged four and a half years, who was the youngest of three brothers. Riley’s speech was so poor that it was difficult to understand what he said. If children are unable to speak clearly, listen to stories or follow instructions then they will be unable to learn to read and write. Gila Falkus, a Speech and Language Therapist, stated that if children start school without basic skills then they will find life very difficult.

Luckily Riley was getting help from Nikki Joyce, a Speech and Language Therapist, who was working with him at his nursery. At four years of age a child should:

• Have reasonably clear speech (although there still may be some immature sounds)
• Be able to hold a reasonable conversation with someone, taking several turns
• Use full sentences, although these will not necessarily be grammatically correct

Riley’s mother was interviewed and said she felt they had kept Riley as the baby of the family, allowing his older bothers to do things for him and not speaking to him in the same way as the others.

Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk from the University of Dundee was then interviewed about her recent study on children using buggies that face away from the parent. (More details of this study can be found on ITS news items page) She said many parents feel it is pointless to talk to babies because they can’t understand language or speak themselves. However earlier research conducted by her illustrated how a baby responded to his mother when she smiled and spoke to him. When she stopped talking and changed her expression by pulling a face, the baby also stopped smiling and appeared puzzled. The mother also held out her finger and the baby looked at her and copied the action. Dr. Zeedyk explained how we underestimate babies’ understanding and early forms of communication. This early interaction is essential for future language development.

Professor Betty art from the University of KansasHHart, from the University of Kansas, has been researching for 50 years on the cause and effect of poor language skills in children. She differentiated between what she termed ‘business talk’ whereby children are asked to do something eg put a coat on, have a drink, way goodbye, and ‘small talk’ which is a general narrative on what is happening around us eg. “look at the flower”, “doesn’t it smell nice” etc. It is this small talk that enriches a child’s language.

She found that in non-talkative families, children were subjected to 10 million words, whereas in talkative families this reached 30 million words.

The programme concluded with a visit to the Potteries where it was found in 2002 that people looking for work did not have some of the basic language skills. It was found that 60% of children starting school there had poor language skills, so support was set up to help improve the situation. This part of the programme followed a little girl called Ashleigh May, who lived in a home where the television was on most of the time and whose mother was too busy working to play with her very often. Ashleigh May received help with her language skills at her day care and her mother learnt how to play with her and help her language develop. Ashleigh May’s mother commented on how she did not realise how important it was to talk to Ashleigh May and how she now left housework until later to enable her to play with Ashleigh May, or included Ashleigh May in simple household tasks such as dusting.

The programme concluded that busy, working parents often do not have time to sit on the floor and play with teddies and tea sets, but the importance of playing with and talking to small children cannot be underestimated. With very young children facial expressions, gesture and speech intonation patterns are also important hence the popularity of nursery or action rhymes. Children like to help around the house, so can be given simple tasks to do, such as dusting or counting socks in the laundry basket. Children’s language development depends on this early interaction. For a variety of reasons, as highlighted in the programme, children are not always getting this early interaction.

To see a re-run of the programme follow this link:

http://www.itv.com/News/tonight/default.html

Jane Gregory

Specialist Speech and Language Therapist

November 2008