“If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you have gotten there?”
Part C: Strand 4 in Te Whāriki is all about ‘Communication’ and one of the recommendations within this is that ‘Adults should have realistic expectations of children’s language development and help to identify assistance if language delays are observed’.
The Education Review Office report ‘Extending their Language – Expanding Their World was released this February. The study investigated how the development of oral language in young children was being supported in the early years of education. The report describes centres that strongly support language, one of their attributes was that “teachers had in-depth knowledge of every child and a shared understanding of, and expectations for, their oral language learning and development”
As a Speech and Language Therapist I have worked with many early childhood educators and I have never met an ECE who wasn’t aware of the importance of the development of communication! But a common complaint is that during their studies they experienced a lack of in depth study on typical childhood development including the development of communication. This leaves many educators unsure when it comes to identifying where a child is in their development, what their next steps might be and how to provide the best environment for developing communication including whether or not to refer for speech and language therapy.
When we talk about ‘typical’ or ‘normal’ language development, we need to have an understanding of what we mean by normal and how we judge normal development. We now know that children are not homogenous blobs or blank slates. They all have different genetics and come from different environments and cultures. Some children are even developing several languages at once! So how does one figure out if a child’s development of communication is normal?
At ‘Dictionary.com’ normal is defined as “conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural”. Normal can be as simple as a casual comparison of a child compared to the other children around them or a scientific comparison like in a standardised assessment. As a casual observer it is important to know that our perception of normal can be impacted by a number of things including our cultural background, cultural perceptions of normal and our experience with children. Even the importance of normal depends heavily on culture. Scientific comparisons use graphs, percentiles and standard scores to give us an understanding of what is expected from the majority of children.
Knowing what impacts normal development of communication can be very useful for parents and caregivers interested in helping children to be the best they can be and it can be helpful in predicting those that are likely to be ok or those likely to need help. There is now no doubt that there is genetic and environmental impacts on the development of communication. What are the environmental factors that optimise language development? How does development in other areas impact on communication? How important are secure relationships and responsive caregiving? The answer to this is that all these things are inter-related.
Child Language and speech deviation graph
As an example, lets think of a child we shall call Sarah. Sarah is growing up in a home with an older and younger sibling and both parents, they live in a high decile neighbourhood. Sarah attends a good quality day-care part time and has a good relationship with her primary carer. Her mother works part time and has Sarah at home the rest of the time. Sarah was considered an easy baby with no feeding difficulties or development concerns noted at plunket visits. Her mother experienced post natal depression, the plunket nurse supported her to see her GP about this and she took medication for a short time. Sarah said her first word shortly after her first birthday and started combining words at 23 months. At three years of age she is described as a typical chatter box and very social. She enjoys playing in the home corner with other children and ‘reading’ books. She isn’t so keen on outdoor play but can be encouraged to do this. Take some time and reflect on aspects of her history that you think could have positively or negatively affected her development of communication. Reflect on what other areas of development might be positively or negatively affected by her level of communication.
Another important factor when considering the normal development of communication is communication itself. Do you know all the factors that make up communication? My use of the word communication rather than language, speech or talking is intentional. If you can familiarise yourself with all aspects of communication then you will find yourself a better observer of a child’s communication skills then if you just look at words and sentences or ability to follow instructions. Who does a child communicate with? How do they communicate? What do they communicate about? What is the result of their communication? You will also find yourself wondering more about children’s behaviours and what they are communicating with their behaviour.
So the last piece in the puzzle of the development of communication is understanding the milestones or steps in the development of communication. We know that typical children within a culture follow roughly the same pattern, they go through similar steps in roughly the same order. We also know that children develop at their own pace and normal development has pretty big windows for when things happen.
The internet offers a wealth of websites to choose from that detail the developmental milestones. It is important to note that there are always subtle differences in different checklists, so try and find one that is evidenced based and resonates with you and use it consistently. I have listed a few that I have found useful.
- www.plunket.org.nz
- www.raisingchildren.net.au
- http://www.talkingpoint.org.uk/ – this website includes progress checkers for different ages!
- www.hanen.org/Home.aspx – Describes milestones within four distinct levels of communication rather than by age which is very disability friendly
It is important to remember that achievement of milestones are one piece of the puzzle. To gain an accurate understanding of child’s communication skills you need to know how they are achieving in other skill areas, what might be impacting positively or negatively on their development and you need to be able to observe these things in functional way over time to gain a picture of their progression within their communication journey
Once you know these things, it then becomes much easier to identify how to maximise the environment and teaching within an early childhood centre to help children be the best communicators that they can be.
To find out more, register for Normal Development of Communication Course with presenter Alison Bruce from Your Potential Speech and Language Therapy.
Guest Author: Alison Bruce, Speech and Language Therapist
Your Potential Speech and Language Therapy
Alison has spent the last year working in the child development service in Nelson. Prior to that she spent over six years working in a remote area of North West Australia as a generalist speech pathologist. Before moving to Australia Alison worked in both private and public services. This has given her a knowledge of a range of areas of speech and language therapy including early development of communication and early intervention.
References:
With thanks to the afore mentioned websites and;
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki, He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa, Early Childhood Curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.
The Education Review Office (2017) Extending their language – expanding their world children’s oral language (birth to 8)
Hayiou-Thomas M.E. Genetic and environmental influences on early speech, language and literacy development. J. Commun. Disord. 2008;41:397–408. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2008.03.002. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Cross Ref]