Every year new children come to school for the first time. There are always some children who don’t speak. They are unusually quiet. In class, they have voices softer than a whisper. Their answers are one nearly inaudible word. So teachers watch and listen and wonder. When the newness of the adventure of school wears off, every child comes around to talk to teachers at recess. It’s then that a teacher discovers speech difficulties.

The categories for concern are:

A child simply does not make sense. They babble some words together in a jumble and then stop. It’s not that you can’t hear them, and there are words…but there is no sense to what they have said.

A child talks to you and the mispronunciation of ninety percent of his or her words is so poor, they can hardly be understood.

A child cannot speak in sentences. He or she is still using hands and one word commands or pleas.

A child cannot respond to a question or a direction with any competency.

Base-line reason behind most of these problems? Lack of practice talking.

Culprits? Cell phones, television, and parents and providers who don’t communicate.

When parents spend the majority of their child/parenting time on their phone, the child will suffer a speech loss. When television is “chronically” on during the day as a “diversion” for kids, children will suffer a speech loss. When parents don’t speak WITH their child, the child will suffer speech loss.

Socio-economic classes used to be defined by vocabulary and speech patterns. Accents and local colloquialisms were the American norm. And that is a sign of families spending time with each other. Children learn to speak because of interaction with family members. The “word stretch” was a gift of educated parents who educated their children. When television became the teacher along about 1955, children started to pick up a “television” language, but television was available for a certain number of hours a day. Children still mostly played outside with their siblings and friends, and parents turned off the television at family times and actually spoke to their children.

When families became limited to one child who had no one to play with, the television became a kind of babysitter. When this happened, a syndrome called “a processing disorder” started to rear it’s ugly head. Children could understand, they knew what was going on, but they could not respond intelligently because they were never asked, and parents who used television to this degree, didn’t even notice.  You see, TV does not expect a response, and even if it gets one, it doesn’t care, so learning HOW to respond at the appropriate age is not learned while parents don’t notice.

And now that cell phones dominate many parents’ lives, there will be more difficulties because children need interaction with a parent for speech development – and not the kind of two second responses while they concentrate on one liners from friends who aren’t really friends. Conversation, the ability to discuss a topic or have a back and forth discourse MUST come before a child is five or a child will struggle all his life. That gives parents five years…and those five years come to a close far too quickly.

Discovering the fact that a child has a limited ability to speak, does not mean racing off to the doctor, speech therapist, psychologist or minster. It means re-arranging one special little time during the day EVERY SINGLE DAY so that the child can catch up. This time is meal time.

Meal time…whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner or even a snack just before bed, is the most important time during the day for family discussion. It’s the time families should turn off the invading television, cell phones, radio, music equipment, and house phone, and sit down, because sitting means you are not ready to leap away, and TALK to your child. It’s a time to expect a response. To have a child practice speaking back at you. Don’t dominate the time…expect a response…come to expect sentences in return, and spend some time laughing, smiling, and showing the child that this time means something to YOU!

Many studies have been done that show that even more than reading to a child, meal time discussion is more important for a child’s social, emotional, spiritual development than any other single family activity. Children learn who their families are, what they think, what’s important in their lives when families talk to one another in the casual meal time activity that meal time should be. Active participation is important for every single family member.

So…is a child’s speech important enough to turn off the world and show your child that he or she really is the world to you? Within weeks of sitting down to a meal with a  child who has speech difficulties, those difficulties will begin to improve. I promise.