Re: Need an opinion /EFAs Late talkers

[Guest guest]

Hi Ann! (and everyone!!)

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week off with the kids! (if your

kids have the week off) Our family has been running from one thing

to another, and right now I'm planning a fun " sleep over " New Years

Eve Party (sssh! It's an excuse to put pajamas on and not go out so I

can finally rest!!)

About EFAs and doctors, of course some respected medical doctors

do " believe " in it. For those of you in Brick, NJ for example, one

of my bestest friends who is an internal medicine

doctor who is well respected out of Kimball Medical Center (part of

the Barnabas System) tells everyone that she's the one that got me to

first give EFAs to my son Tanner! She recommends fish oil to all her

patients-and when I first showed her the ProEFA-she popped it in her

mouth to chew it to taste the oil (not kidding! and yes she thought

the oil tasted pure.)

's son was a preemie, and she supplemented herself with EFAs

while pregnant and nursing, and would put EFAs into her son's formula

when they gave Josh the bottle. Now she squeezes the oil onto his

food every day-and Josh is doing amazing-he's very advanced.

's from a large family (from the US and India) of medical

doctors (and attorneys) and she laughs at the fact that we are " just "

discovering the benefits of fish oil. Most of 's patients are

senior citizens, and she sees the benefits in the elderly for various

reasons -fish oil is not just for children!!

So for the doctors who think fish oil is foolish- let them hear

what's really foolish is not looking at the clear signs that

something appears to be helping from one of their colleagues- not

from you-one of their patients. Some doctors (again not all) may not

accept info that is not from a medical doctor (or journal) that they

respect. If it were my niece, my friend's baby or my own, and the

child was a late talker...no question about it for me I would try

ProEFA. We HAVE to say " check with your doctor " because we are

advised to, however in NJ where many of us know each other, how many

actually do check? Not many-sadly. How else will doctors learn if

we don't tell them? I will also tell you that I only know 2 people

personally who had blood analysis to check fatty acid levels -and

neither was before starting the child on EFAs! I know one or two who

had children with seizures that planned on doing blood analysis

before starting -that's it.

When we had the First Apraxia Conference, one of the (very well known

and respected internationally-hint) scientists was speaking to some

of us (the parents) One of the parents was (very) adamant about every

parent getting the blood analysis done for their child (one of the

two who had it done that I knew) and in front of this parent I cut in

and asked the scientist, " Forget scientific reasons-if you had a

child that was a late talker, would you get blood analysis first, or

would you just give your child the EFAs? " And she (hint)this

respected scientist laughed (just like my friend does when she

answers obvious questions like this about EFAs) and said " I would

just give it to them! "

About late talkers in general-here is one of my favorite articles

from the New York Times on the subject. Bottom line is that it

doesn't matter the reason-why not look into it and see what you can

do to help early?

The link to one of my favorite articles is here:

http://faculty.washington.edu/pkkuhl/NYT11_30_99.html

" Fix Speech Problems Early, Experts Now Urge

By RANDI MUTTER EPSTEIN

Legend has it that Albert Einstein did not say much as a toddler,

making his mother and father worry that he might never be very

bright. His supposed failure to master language early has reassured

parents of late talkers ever since.

Until recently, most pediatricians have been similarly reassuring.

Let young children learn to speak at their own pace, they told

parents. Don't even consider speech therapy, at least until school

age.

Now that is changing. Today, parents are generally told to look for

signs of delay early, even in a baby's first year, and seek help. No

one should assume that a silent 2year-old is a budding genius;

silence may be a sign of hearing loss or a neurological disorder.

The new advice is based in part on studies showing that children with

speech impairments are more likely to have reading and social

problems later. Working with very young children, with malleable

brain connections, may rewire defective connections. " We now know the

earlier the intervention the better the brain can reorganize, " said

Dr. Diane -Brown, director of clinical issues in speech-language

pathology for the American Speech-Language,Hearing Association in

Rockville, Md.

At the same time, neuroscientists are using advanced new tools to

look into the inner workings of the brains of infants and toddlers,

hoping to gain insight into the biological basis of language. The

results still very preliminary, do not offer any quick fixes. But

they demonstrate that a person's ability to understand and say words

begins in the first few months of life, and experts say they provide

even stronger evidence that efforts to correct speech defects should

begin as soon as possible.

" In this past decade, we have learned a tremendous amount about how

much learni ng goes on in this early period, and language is a great

example, " said Dr. Kuhl, a professor of speech and hearing

sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. " It used to be

that we didn't think anything was going on up there until there was

evidence language had begun. Now we know that while babies are quiet,

there is a tremendous amount going on in the brain. "

Speech therapists and neuroscientists are delighted with the flurry

of studies, but the option of early intervention has left many

parents of young children in a quandary: how does one distinguish

normal speech development, with all of its age-appropriate blunders,

from a language defect that warrants medical attention?

While it is easy to spot a language problem in, say, a 9-year-old,

detecting one in a toddler who is just beginning to experiment with

words is much trickier. It is a rare 2or 3-year-old who is completely

comprehensible. Lisping, stuttering, slurring long words–all are

normal.

For toddlers, communication is far more important than articulation,

said Dr. Cunningham, a pediatric otolaryngologist at the

Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. Parents should not

expect a toddler to pronounce every sound correctly, but should

concentrate on diction and the melody of speech: does a question, for

example, sound like a question?

At this age, he and other doctors said, many sounds are difficult and

mispronunciation is to be expected. Compared with the " m " sound, made

by simply closing the mouth, for instance, the " r " requires lifting

the tongue, pulling It to the back of the mouth and tightening the

lips. Double consonants are another tricky maneuver. " If you came to

me and said your child cannot say 'st' and he was 3, 4 or even 5

years old, I would not be concerned, " Dr. -Brown said.

Many toddlers stutter simply because the brain is working faster than

the mouth muscles, not because they have a chronic problem. " You

should worry if there is stuttering in the family, or if you see

secondary characteristics, such as eye blinks or hand flicks as if

the child is trying to push away the stutter, " said Debra Hagen, a

speech pathologist in New York City.

For most children, the powers of language blossom somewhere between

18 months and 2 years, with an outpouring of words flowing together

in a crude grammar. Children know an average of about 50 words at

this stage. " Something happens in the brain that enables children to

grasp a sense of grammar, " said Dr. Landa, a speech

pathologist and associate professor of psychiatry at the s

Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. " For instance, most 2year-

olds will say throw ball, not ball throw. "

Twins are particularly interesting because they tend to speak later

than singletons. Dr. , a British pediatrician who is

president of the International Society of Twin Studies, says the

delay is probably environmental, not genetic. Children born

prematurely often reach milestones later than those born full term,

and many twins are premature.

Dr. notes that parents of twins and other multiple-birth

children tend to focus their gaze somewhere between the children,

inadvertently withholding eye contact, which can be crucial in the

development of speech. And twins, she added, tend to have the worst

language teachers: they talk to each other. " Their main model for

language, " she said, " is someone who talks as badly as they do. "

The new approach to language research relies not so much on such

behavioral factors as on brain imaging technology. The studies, which

are beginning to localize regions where language defects occur, do

not provide clues to treatment. But scientists hope the information

may provide a way to detect language defects early, ultimately

allowing speeth therapists to focus on those at high risk, perhaps

even before their first words are uttered.

At the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at the Weill

Medical College of Cornell University in New York, scientists are

using magnetic resonance imaging to scan brain patterns in 6- and

7year-olds as they stare at video screens with flashing words. In

previous studies of adults, scientists have found that brain patterns

among dyslexics are different from those of normal readers. " But it

is very important to study children, right about the time reading

difficulties begin to appear, " said Dr. Bruce McCandliss, an

assistant professor of psychology at the institute. Preliminary

results suggest that reading intervention programs may change the

patterns of brain activation in children at risk for dyslexia.

Dr. McCandliss's team and others are also using shower-cap-like

devices that measure the electricity firing from the brain as

children think about words or say them. " Mapping the pattern of

electricity as someone reads a word enables us to record hundreds of

signals from the brain within a second, " Dr. McCandliss said.

Preliminary results from another Sackler Institute study suggest that

the brain has distinct regions for every aspect of the ability to

understand a word. There is one region for recognizing a word's

sound, for instance, and another for recognizing the meaning of that

sound. The findings, reported by a team led by Dr. Posner,

director of the institute, were published in February in the journal

NeuroReport.

Other researchers are trying to spot the very beginnings of language

in a young child. Dr. Kuhl of the University of Washington found that

even before children were 1, they were already beginning to

categorize sounds, a crucial step toward learning a language.

In one study, Dr. Kuhl compared the ability of 30 American and

Japanese babies to distinguish between the " r " and " 1 " sounds.

(Previous studies have shown that Japanese adults cannot hear the

difference between the two.) She found that at 6 months, babies from

both countries scored the same: about 64 percent of the time they

distinguished between the two sounds. But between 10 and 12 months,

the American babies' scores rose to 84 percent while the Japanese

babies' dropped a bit, to 59 percent. Even at age 1, Dr. Kuhl said,

the Japanese babies were developing a code for their language that

did not require two categories for " r " and " l. "

Despite these insights, assessing a toddler still depends on

traditional methods like having a speech pathologist evaluate a

child's ability to understand and communicate at an age-appropriate

level. Though parents can be guided by certain milestones, like the

50 words for 2-year-olds, any parent who is worried should consult a

speech pathologist, experts say.

And the experts add that a critical ingredient of early assessment is

not speech at all, but hearing. " If you have a kid with chronic ear

infections, they may not pick up every sound, and then language

development will be off, " said Dr. Debra E. Seltzer, director of

developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Babies and Children's

Hospital of New York.

" In the past, people didn't appreciate the encoding of language that

happens from the age of 6 months, " Dr. Seltzer said. " If there is

something intervening, like ear infections, they will not hear subtle

sounds and the messages will not be carried to the brain properly. "

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Time to Talk?

Before and after children start saying words, parents can look for

milestones to see whether they are developing appropriate language

skills. Below, excerpts from a checklist distributed by the American

Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

BIRTH

• Makes pleasure sounds.

..............................................

0 TO 3 MONTHS

• Repeats the same sounds a lot.

• Cries differently for different needs.

• Smiles when she sees you.

..............................................

4 TO 6 MONTHS

• Babbling sounds more speech-like, with many different sounds.

• Tells you (by sound or gesture) when he wants to do something.

• Makes gurgling sounds when left alone or when playing with you.

..............................................

7 TO 12 MONTHS

• Babbling has both long and short groups of sounds, like " tata upup

bibibibi. " ~ Uses speech or non-crying sounds to get and keep

attention.

• Imitates different speech sounds.

• Has one or two words ( " bye-bye, " " dada, " " mama, " " no " ), although

they may not be clear.

..............................................

1 TO 2 YEARS

• Says more words every month.

• Uses some one- or two-word questions ( " Where kitty? " " Go bye-

bye? " " What's that? " ).

• Uses many different consonant sounds at the beginning of words.

..............................................

2 TO 3 YEARS

• Has a word for almost everything. ~ Uses two- or three-

word " sentences " to ask for things.

• Often names objects.

..............................................

3 TO 4 YEARS

• Talks about activities at school or at friends' homes.

• Usually talks easily, without repeating syllables or words.

• People outside family usually understand her speech.

• Sentences often have four or more words.

..............................................

4 TO 5 YEARS

• Tells stories that stick to a topic.

• Communicates easily.

• Sounds are mostly correct, except a few, like l, s, r, v, z, j, ch,

sh and th.

• Uses adult grammar. "

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