Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

144
Disturbances in Speech Development at Preschool Age
As families fall silent in daily life and in front of the television
screen we will see dramatic consequences in the acquisition of speech by
small children. Physicians dealing with speech and hearing problems in
children have long ago sounded the alarm, since the phonemicist Manfred
Heinemann in Mainz, Germany, came across an unexpectedly high number
of cases of children at the age of three-and-a-half to four years in need
of treatment. Research carried out from 1988 to 1992 found, an average of
25 percent of the children had speech disorders, half of these cases being
classed as mild and the other half ranging to severe. At first this result
seemed unbelievable as a comparable study ten years earlier only found
four percent, a figure which corresponded to previous results. The numbers
were examined, but did not change. In ten years the level had risen by
more than 20% - a frightening diagnosis!
Further research has been carried out, national and international
congresses of logopaedists have dedicated themselves to this subject, and
still the numbers do not change. Today we have to assume that on average
every third or fourth child of preschool age suffers from a delay in, or
disturbance of, its speech development, independent of social class or the
level of educational opportunity Children of academics are affected as much
as those of unskilled workers.
It has also come to light that speech disorders can have an effect on
the entire motor and sensory development. Even years after therapy most
of the children still show conspicuous shortcomings. Follow-up research
on second and third graders who had had speech therapy for difficulties
four years earlier, showed that 44 percent of them still had shortcomings
and 36 percent had difficulties with orthography The short-term memory
was less developed and dealing with sentence structures proved notably
difficult for them. Many of the children displayed deficient motor skills as
well.
Disturbances to speech development can lead to ongoing handicaps
in other areas of a child’s development.
“Talk To Me!”
For thousands of years speech has surrounded people like the air
they breathe: children grew into it instinctively; learning to speak seemed
to be a gift of nature. Today, however, it is no longer like this. In 1997 a
leading health insurance company felt compelled to publish a book with
the title “Talk to Me!” with the sole purpose being to stimulate parents to
speak with their child! The reason is obvious: It would be unaffordable for
the health insurance company if every third or fourth child would require
speech therapy, not to mention that there would not be enough specialists
to deal with the onslaught. All observers agree that preventative measures
are needed!
For this, however, you need to know the causes, and they prove to
be complex. Specialists like the above mentioned Manfred Heinemann,