Thpringing Back!

Because it’s so easy to list the bad things that occupy our minds these days, we can miss some of the good. And one of the most joyous things we sense coming is normalthy. Oops…normalcy!

That’s right, normalcy is coming…slowly. With it, comes a renewed urge to appreciate and DO things that the pandemic held us back from doing. One of those things is paying attention to the nuances in our children’s speech, especially given they’ve been masked for so long.

It isn’t just how we hear kids that’s been affected, but it’s also how they’ve heard and seen others. You see, the way we develop our speech pronunciation is highly dependent on how we hear and see others speak (this is how reading develops, too, but we’ll get into that another time). We have no reliable proof that the pandemic has had any broad impact on speech and language development in kids (yet), but it’s reasonable to think that it has impacted those who already have delays or are prone to being delayed. 

So how would those already at risk be more impacted? It could be the delay in getting these kids identified and helped. Virtual therapy can be helpful, but it doesn’t work for all kids, and doesn’t provide the naturalistic environment in which our brains are programmed to learn and thrive. Kids that can’t participate to their full potential through a screen risk further delay (and let’s not forget young kids’ distractibility). Combined with the wait times made worse by the pandemic, we could be missing key age windows during which maximum success can be achieved. The thing is, we don’t want our kids with speech difficulties to get to the age when their peers start to notice. And we all know why that is.   

But hold up! Spring is here, remember? And as always, so is your Friendly Neighbourhood Speech Pathologist. Our locations across southern Ontario help our clients avoid the wait and the screens, and help kids’ brains develop the way they were meant to develop.  

 

Mohamed (Mo) Oshalla, MHSc.,
Speech-Language Pathologist & Executive Director,
Ontario Speech & Language Services