Facing The Sunshine: Speech and language development

When AngelicA was just a few months old, my sister gave me one of the Chicken Soup books which had a story of a couple and their special needs child. I still remember one particularly poignant part - At the first meeting with a therapist, the parents tell the therapist that all they want is for their child to say 'I Love You' to them.

At the end of the story, my sister had scribbled - Don't worry, Angel will say ‘I Love You’. I guess my sister knew - as only a sister can - that I was quite concerned about the speech delay associated with Down Syndrome. I would wonder when she would say her first word. I hoped that she wouldn't take too long to speak. You know how it is, right?

So over the past few months, I’ve been trying to do a little more than her speech therapist has suggested. While I do stuff with Angel through the day, we reserve one hour every morning for some intense reading, talking and singing. Angel loves songs with animal sounds – Old MacDonald is her favorite – so I do the singing and she fills in the animal sounds. We also do a lot of action songs and games. She really enjoys it and I think all these sessions have helped her language development. Even her therapist is amazed at the progress she has made. Though she still babbles most of the time, she has started saying a few words. And just before her second birthday, she surprised us – she scrunched up her little face up and wrinkled her little nose as she struggled to mouth the words and then slowly but surely she said “Appy Birthday” and clapped for herself. It was just too cute J

Since language development is one of those major developmental concerns for our babies, I've been looking for some speech and language development resources on the net and here are some of them.

This page on the National Down Sydrome Congress site is a must read for all parents. It provides links to several useful articles by some of the leading experts on speech and language development.

If your baby is really young, this article provides a good overview on speech difficulties and milestones for speech. And here’s another comprehensive article on Speech and Language Development in Infants and Young Children.

Speech pathologist Robert Kurtz has some really great ideas on creating a language rich environment and some of them are listed below:

· Turn off the TV

· Talk, talk, talk (slowly and simply)

· Sing and rhyme (if you can't sing, rap)

· Get out the toys and play, but ditch the batteries

· "Talk" some books to your child

· Use focused stimulation

· Learn (and use) some baby signs

And here are some more sites that have loads of ideas and even games that you could use at home:
Everyday household activities for encouraging language development

Speech Therapy Activities

Mommy Speech Therapy

Speech-Language therapy resources and games that work