Younger children increasingly referred to speech therapy in Finland

[Tennis]

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/y...nland/10057746

The average age of children being referred to speech therapy in Finland is falling, as people are growing increasingly aware of the importance of early detection. Many more children are attending speech therapy now in Finland than in the past.

Professor Sari Kunnari, head of Finland's Child Language Research Centre at the University of Oulu, says the longer that speech therapy is put off, the more likely it is that secondary problems will arise.

"If children have poor means of expressing themselves, they often compensate for it with bad behaviour. Little ones that have trouble with language can easily become ostracized in the company of other children of the same age," Kunnari says

Don't wait until more damage has been done

Problems speaking can also cause children to be teased and may affect learning outcomes later in life.

"If speech therapy starts too late, the child might have already reached the conclusion that he or she can't talk properly and will never learn. Awareness of the difficulty can slow down the therapy exercises," says Heta Piirto, director of the Finnish Association of Speech Therapists.

Of the twenty percent of children who are delayed in speech, Kunnari says the majority are able to catch up with their peers quite quickly. About seven percent are generally estimated to suffer from serious problems with language and expression.

"Among those who exhibit a delay, perhaps only one third will see it continue for a longer period so that it could present a serious linguistic problem," she says.

Study hopes to determine who needs the most help

Kunnari's research group is studying late language emergence among a group of over 60 children in the hopes of identifying connections between children’s different linguistic profiles and later outcomes. Other variables from the child's personality and parental and family background will also be assessed. Special emphasis is put on the child's socio-emotional development and interactive habits.

"We are looking at the children to see whose language skills start to develop rapidly and whose don't, to determine some of the factors behind this. Which variables can explain why some children experience only transient language problems and the language-learning difficulties of others continue once they enter school?" she says.

The objective is for results of the study to help health care personnel working with mothers and young children to be able to better identify the need for speech therapy and other kinds of language development support.

Due to the growing number of referrals, it may take as long as 18 months for a child to finally start meeting with a speech therapist in areas where resources are scarce. Improved diagnosis could help put an end to this problem.

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/y...nland/10057746

I wonder why so many kids need to be referred?
I also notice a lot more kids/teens seemingly diagnosed with ADD as well.

[Powerogue]

I can confirm I received speech therapy for my R's but was still bullied remorselessly because I was an enormous weenie.

[Tennis]

I can confirm I received speech therapy for my R's but was still bullied remorselessly because I was an enormous weenie.

How much did it cost?

[Dhrizzle]

I wonder why so many kids need to be referred?

From the article;

people are growing increasingly aware of the importance of early detection.

I also notice a lot more kids/teens seemingly diagnosed with ADD as well.

Possibly for the same reason, possibly because parents are pressuring doctors to "fix" their child, possibly because drugs companies are pressuring doctors to shill their products, possibly because the government is enacting a system of mental castration by medicating people into compliance at an early age.

[Annu]

How much did it cost?

In my case it was paid by the school (my parents actually thought it funny that I could not pronounce certain letters - my teachers thought differently).

However I was never bullied because of my speech problems, but rather because my whole development was delayed until I was about 20. If a child has problems learning how to speak there is nearly always a medical problem behind, which causes more problems than just speech. In my case I am pretty sure that a chromosome anomaly is behind this, which only affects your verbal IQ, but I did not test it yet.

[Deleted]

Here it's more a problem with children that use a defective form of Dutch, which they copy from mostly Turkish and Moroccan children in their class.

And then there is the problem of using street slang in their vocabulary, which happens mostly with children in the larger cities with mixed ethnicities.

[Deleted]

Maybe we could accept that some children develop much slower than the others and instead of forcing them into all kinds of therapies, provide appriopriate environment to grow at their own pace (instead of forcing all children into the sameness of early/mid educational path).

[Deleted]

Digitalization and brainless entertainment.

Give children less smartphones and more books -- good and interesting books, not some toddler-level nonsense. I was reading Dumas and Verne when I was 6 years old, and knew how to read long before that; big thanks to my parents who taught me to read in an early age. And I loved it! I could read anything I wanted, whenever I wanted -- from comics and children's stories to classical literature and dinosaur, history and medical books -- without having to wait for my parents to have free time for storytelling. (Maybe that was their plan all along...) Of course back then I didn't really comprehend all the freedom it gave me; I just took it as a natural state of affairs.

Sadly it seems that many other parents aren't as responsible. Yeah, obviously not all children develop as fast, but if you don't even try to home-school them, they most certainly won't. So much depends on the parents (or whoever happens to be the guardian) and their example. Their effect must not be underestimated.

[Annu]

Maybe we could accept that some children develop much slower than the others and instead of forcing them into all kinds of therapies, provide appriopriate environment to grow at their own pace (instead of forcing all children into the sameness of early/mid educational path).

This is exactly what the homeopathy loving doctor said to my parents.

I'm really glad that my teachers acted on their own behalf, because you cannot easily fix speech problems after primary school. This would be as hard as learning a second language without any accent, which most people cannot achieve after childhood.

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Digitalization and brainless entertainment.

Give children less smartphones and more books -- good and interesting books, not some toddler-level nonsense. I was reading Dumas and Verne when I was 6 years old, and knew how to read long before that; big thanks to my parents who taught me to read in an early age. And I loved it! I could read anything I wanted, whenever I wanted -- from comics and children's stories to classical literature and dinosaur, history and medical books -- without having to wait for my parents to have free time for storytelling. (Maybe that was their plan all along...) Of course back then I didn't really comprehend all the freedom it gave me; I just took it as a natural state of affairs.

Sadly it seems that many other parents aren't as responsible. Yeah, obviously not all children develop as fast, but if you don't even try to home-school them, they most certainly won't. So much depends on the parents (or whoever happens to be the guardian) and their example. Their effect must not be underestimated.

Speech problems have nothing to do with reading.

If you had learned a second language to the point where you can read a novel, you would know that reading does not improve your pronunciation at all. In the same way posting at mmo-champ does not help me to get rid of my horrible Viennese accent.

[luc54]

Obligatory shit at Finland post after some praise Canada posts by @Tennis. Did you piss him off again @Sydänyö ?

Anyway

people are growing increasingly aware of the importance of early detection.

as mentioned earlier is the reason. Oh and I have been to speech therapy when I was a kid thanks to the difficulty of pronouncing R's which are rolled. I have no problem with them after the therapy so they do help. There's nothing particullary wrong with using these therapies if you are having difficulty learning the speech.

[Azadina]

Obligatory shit at Finland post after some praise Canada posts by @Tennis. Did you piss him off again @Sydänyö ?

Anyway as mentioned earlier is the reason. Oh and I have been to speech therapy when I was a kid thanks to the difficulty of pronouncing R's which are rolled. I have no problem with them after the therapy so they do help. There's nothing particullary wrong with using these therapies if you are having difficulty learning the speech.

Pretty sure it was me this time, and here came the Finland thread like clockwork immediately after. It's so hilariously transparent.

[Independent voter]

Pretty sure it was me this time, and here came the Finland thread like clockwork immediately after. It's so hilariously transparent.

Naw, Canadians aren't like that, they're nice.

[Noradin]

Naw, Canadians aren't like that, they're nice.

We do not know for sure if Tennis is Canadian.

[Deleted]

Speech problems have nothing to do with reading.

If you have a poor vocabulary and don't know how words are written, it's certainly not going to help.

If you had learned a second language to the point where you can read a novel, you would know that reading does not improve your pronunciation at all.

But we are talking about Finnish. Finnish is a phonetic language, meaning that letters are pronounced the exact same way every time, in every word, with just a few minor exceptions. Reading and speaking fit together more seamlessly than in any other language. Aside from the usual R and S issues that are common with many children at some point, I'm not sure how can you fail at speaking, unless you are being constantly exposed to low-quality language.

[Noradin]

If you have a poor vocabulary and don't know how words are written, it's certainly not going to help.

Those are seperate problems.
You can communicate perfectly in written form without having any idea about how to pronounce the language at all.

[Tennis]

Obligatory shit at Finland post after some praise Canada posts by @Tennis. Did you piss him off again @Sydänyö ?

Anyway as mentioned earlier is the reason. Oh and I have been to speech therapy when I was a kid thanks to the difficulty of pronouncing R's which are rolled. I have no problem with them after the therapy so they do help. There's nothing particullary wrong with using these therapies if you are having difficulty learning the speech.

Oh please. Maybe I am just interested in Finland or maybe I have Finnish heritage. Don't jump to conclusions.

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Pretty sure it was me this time, and here came the Finland thread like clockwork immediately after. It's so hilariously transparent.

Rather arrogant to assume that's all about you..not a good look.

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We do not know for sure if Tennis is Canadian.

That's your problem if you don't believe it. Feel free to think what you want.

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From the article;





Possibly for the same reason, possibly because parents are pressuring doctors to "fix" their child, possibly because drugs companies are pressuring doctors to shill their products, possibly because the government is enacting a system of mental castration by medicating people into compliance at an early age.

But is it really a problem or just a perceived problem?

[Noradin]

That's your problem if you don't believe it. Feel free to think what you want.

It is not really a problem for me, I do not care either way.

[Tennis]

It is not really a problem for me, I do not care either way.

Yeah it is. You're making silly accusations which are really low and underhand. I expect better on here.

[Uzkin]

Digitalization and brainless entertainment.

Give children less smartphones and more books -- good and interesting books, not some toddler-level nonsense. I was reading Dumas and Verne when I was 6 years old, and knew how to read long before that; big thanks to my parents who taught me to read in an early age. And I loved it! I could read anything I wanted, whenever I wanted -- from comics and children's stories to classical literature and dinosaur, history and medical books -- without having to wait for my parents to have free time for storytelling. (Maybe that was their plan all along...) Of course back then I didn't really comprehend all the freedom it gave me; I just took it as a natural state of affairs.

Sadly it seems that many other parents aren't as responsible. Yeah, obviously not all children develop as fast, but if you don't even try to home-school them, they most certainly won't. So much depends on the parents (or whoever happens to be the guardian) and their example. Their effect must not be underestimated.

I agree with this. The fact that the digital media mostly presents itself in English further hinders the Finnish children's language development (Finnish is completely different from English). As an educator, I have witnessed the negative impact of this also on the youth's and young adults' written Finnish (not just speech). Such a text contains lots of grammatical/sentence-structure errors due to English influence. "Yhdys sanat kirjoitetaan erikseen ja pilkut unohdetaan vaikka niitä pitäisi käyttää."

[Deleted]

I couldn't pronounce my R's till I was around 14, didn't use therapy but I suspect this is more serious issues