COVID-19 Pandemic

A cause behind Speech Delay in Your Child?

As kids hit toddler-hood, making sure they’re on track with major development milestones such as talking can sometimes be difficult to judge.

In today’s scenario, most of the families are single where husband and wife both are working and not having sufficient time to spend with child. Before pandemic, most of the working parents try to give their best by admitting them in quality daycare or pre-schools.

But in last two years, when kids hit toddler-hood during a pandemic and they’ve likely been kept out of group childcare environments, had way more TV time (one way) than you would otherwise have liked, and spent a lot of time being spoken to by masked adults – it affect their major development – physically, socially and specially linguistically.

Learn how to spot a speech delay in your child and what you can do at home to help.

Even before COVID hit, experts had noticed a rise in problems among young children in the world, with prevalence of Speech-Sound Disorders (SSD) such as stuttering, apraxia, lack of social communication and other impairments affecting around nine percent of kids. Roughly five to eight percent of preschoolers experience language delays that continue throughout their school years and into adulthood, while 15-20 percent of two-year-olds are delayed in their expressive language development.

“Red flags to watch out for at any time in those up to four years old include any loss of speech or babbling, never gesturing or imitating, not appearing to understand speech or to hear very well and never developing words beyond repeating what others say,” says experts.