Articles

Speech, Language and Hearing Evaluation in School Children

By Ms. Nitta Mathew : Speech Pathologist and Audiologist

As we know, school-going age is the most vital stage in all our life. This is the period when a major part of child’s development takes place. It takes shape in this age and undergoes major changes both physically and mentally. Hence, any sort of deviation from the normal growth pattern will have a major impact in the long run. Many of the habits and behaviour shown by a person is a reflection of his/her earlier formative years, namely the school going age. This is when he develops interpersonal relationships outside the home and learns the basic rules of communication.

The language and communication skills that a person shows until the pubertal age will determine how successful he is in communicating his thoughts, ideas and emotions later. Any kind of psychological or emotional problems that occurs in this age, which hampers his language development will determine the effectiveness of his communication skills.

The intention of communication is to send messages clearly and definitely to others. This involves effort from both the sender and the listener of the message. Communication involves speaking as well as listening. The basic idea conveyed through communication should be interpreted in the right way and responded to. When communication is not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you send do not necessarily reflect your own. Thus leading to a communication breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and professionally.

Hearing is a critical part of a child’s social, emotional and cognitive development, even a mild or partial hearing loss can affect the child’s ability to speak and understand language. Some of the speech and language associated problems most commonly seen in school-aged children are learning disability, hearing impairment, stuttering (stammering) and pronunciation errors. In simple words, a person can be identified to have a communication problem when more attention is drawn to the way a person speaks rather than what he is trying to communicate.

According to a recent survey conducted in India, one out of ten children has been identified as having learning disability. Stuttering is another common problem seen in school going children. Stuttering can cause by many reasons. Many of these stem from early childhood and these continue to a later stage and hence the result in poor self-esteem and the child tends to feel inferior to his peers. He also becomes subject to teasing and rejection from his peer group, which can result in a personality problem in the adulthood. Cluttering is the term used to indicate extreme fast rate of speech in a child, due to the fast rate tends to miss out some words or sounds making the speech sound distorted and even unintelligible. However, one major feature of this disorder is that the person is unaware of the problem that makes the intervention even more difficult.

In spite of the increasing importance placed on communication skills, many individuals continue to struggle for sharing their thoughts and ideas effectively whether in verbal or written format. This inability makes it nearly impossible for them to compete effectively in the workplace and stands in the way of career progression.

Some of the common warning signs of communication disorders noticed in children are feeding problems, developmental or medical problems, limited eye contact and easily distractable, lack of interest in speech and limited vocalizations limited sound production, groping movements of tongue when attempting to make or imitate sounds, lack of interest in socializing and difficulties with attachment, does not understand any words or directions, does not speak in full sentences (not necessarily correct grammar, but nice variety of word types) ,cannot relate experiences, even in simple telegraph sentences.

If the above-mentioned problems are identified in a child, a detailed speech and language assessment is strongly recommended. This will help the caretakers to understand the child’s breakdown in communication and help in re mediation by adopting strategies to facilitate a better relationship with the child. Any sort of problems or breakdown in communication if identified in the early stages, can be effectively remedied. This would help the individual in overcoming the problems that can occur later on. Consequently, this will help in overcoming any sort of psychological or emotional problems and in the overall social development of the individual. Early intervention is the key to develop good communication skills.