A recent study done this year (link: https://psyarxiv.com/j7kcn/) has found that children born during the covid pandemic (April, 2020 to November 2020), has twice the risk of developmental delays in areas of speech and communication and social skills, as compared to children born before the pandemic.
Some researchers believe that this may be due to the lack of social interaction with other children, among other factors.
How delays in communication look like?
Delays in communication would mean that the child start learning to talk later, talks lesser or prefers using physical methods e.g. gestures like pointing to replace talking or crying instead of requesting.
How delays in social development look like?
Common observations of children who might have social development delays are lack of eye contact, does not pay attention to instructions from adults, does not play with other children, or displays inappropriate play behaviors like throwing toys, destroying their peers’ constructions, hitting their peers, etc.
What should I do if my child is displaying these issues?
The best way to determine if your child is experiencing any developmental delays is to book an appointment with your child’s pediatrician or family doctor to talk about your child’s developmental milestones. You can also book an observation/ consultation session with us at Therapy Kidz and our professional therapists can advise you accordingly after a 30 minutes observation session.
Parents can also support their children’s language development at home with the following strategies while waiting and going through the consultation sessions with the professionals.
- Speech Modelling and Expanding on your child’s speech
- Children learn speech and language through listening and observing. The most meaningful way for teaching them speech is not by asking them to repeat 10 times after you. Instead, it’s by rephrasing and saying it for them with the proper sentence and intonation. You can also expand your child’s speech by adding more details or information when they say something. For example, when you child says “kitty”, you can expand and respond by saying “Yes, that is a cute brown cat”.
- Following your child’s lead
- Children learn best when they are highly motivated or focused on a specific item. Parents can take the opportunity to teach vocabulary whenever their child is looking at something or when they pick up something. Parents can also teach simple requests when their child is using gestures to request for something by applying the speech modelling method shared above.
- Story Time
- Schedule story time with your child and read age-appropriate stories with them to expose them to more words. A great time for this would be before bed!
- Intervention
- Individualised intervention helps children to build speech and improve their communication and social skills in a comfortable, fun, and effective way. The therapists will often assess your child’s baseline skills and plan programmes and goals according to that.
Individualised intervention helps children to build speech and improve their communication and social skills in a comfortable, fun, and effective way. The therapists will often assess your child’s baseline skills and plan programmes and goals according to that.
At Therapy Kidz, we specialise in Behavior Therapy and other individualized intervention programmes that are holistic and works on many areas in a child’s development. Common areas that we work on are:
– Teaching and encouraging appropriate behaviours
– Replacing inappropriate behaviors with appropriate coping skills
– Learning and academic skills
– Language and communication
– Social skills
– Compliance
– Attention and focus
– Fine-motor skills
– Eye Contact
Our unique naturalistic approach helps to make learning meaningful and helps the skills to generalise to the child’s natural environment. Speak to us through our online form (https://therapykidz.com.sg/contact-us/) or send us a WhatsApp message (+65 85333425/ +65 82990749).
