Late talkers may be fine in later life—Study

Here’s some good news for parents of kids who start talking late! A new Oz study has proposed that a slow start may not have an everlasting effect on the mental health of the child.

According to the Australian study, late talkers need not be depressed, aggressive or shy always and they could end up being fine as they grew up.

The study that aimed at examining late talkers till the teens found that they were not associated with mental illness and it was only in some cases where the symptoms were vulnerable.

"This data is reassuring. But parents will need to pay attention to other troubling symptoms of either psychosocial problems or language and reading problems," informed Julia Irwin, a student of language development at Haskins Laboratories, a non-profit research institute in New Haven, Connecticut.

Language lag linked to reading problems
Toddlers having a language lag have been linked with language and reading problems in later life, but this has been unclear and nothing is known about the long term results.

The researchers found that 7 to 18 percent of children are late talkers and generally start talking after 2 and many start talking fine by the time they start school.

A team of researchers headed by psychologist Andrew Whitehouse at the University of Western Australia in Perth is the first study that aimed at finding the connection between language lag and psychological problems in later life.

Study details
For the study, the researchers examined more than 1,400 infants aged 2 and their parents were asked to fill out a survey form on the usage of words by their kids.

Though a two-year-old says only a few hundred words, there is a huge amount of variation and out of 310 common words, almost one in every ten kids scored lower than 15 percent.

"'Wait and see' may be okay at 2 years, but there should be a critical time after which language delays should be treated," said child psychologist Gail Ross.

The study has been published in the online journal 'Pediatrics'.