How to Deal with a Speech Delay

Host: Dr. Pavlakis, there is always a concern, my kid is not speaking and the kid is 18 months old or something like that, which kids are you worried about and which kids you are not so worried about?

Guest: Well again if a child is not speaking but has good receptive functioning, understands our body parts, follows age appropriate commands, I wouldn't worry about that child. If a child is not speaking at 18 months and is behind in terms of understanding age appropriate functions such as body parts for example, that child would be someone I would worry about more. Again they may develop normally, be perfectly normal and be smarter than everybody else but it's certainly a red flag for a child that maybe delayed at that point.

Host: We know all babies are screened when they are born for hearing but they still want her to have another hearing evaluation when a kid start speaking at that time?

Guest: Well I think if a child at that age is not speaking one has to look different at possibilities of causes and one would be hearing. So those children should be screened for hearing either by the pediatrician or by a speech and language therapist.

Host: Take a family history and father talked a little light, will that fit the pattern here too or there is no correlation between the two?

Guest: Well the most - one of the concerns in a child that's not talking normally may not understand things normally is that the child could have a relative language disability, a learning disability, you can't be sure at this age but the child would be at risk for it. This transfer into families and language disabilities are actually the most common learning disability, what a learning disability is ultimately is that a child can have a normal brain function and that can be smarter than everybody else in the world but in one task falls at the bottom 3% of the population and you can't tell that at 18 months but this child that's delayed at 18 months from a language perspective would be an at risk child for the development of the learning disability which is language based.

Host: Thank you Dr. Pavlakis.


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