Baby Talk Is OK--for Babies

\o7 "I wa baba" (Translation: I want my bottle.)

"Wa go momma?" (Translation: Where are you going, Momma?)

\f7 It's not a foreign language; it's baby talk, and even if you can't understand the words, it sounds adorable coming out of the mouths of babies.

But what if your 3-year-old is still talking that way? Then it could be a sign of a speech disorder, a potentially serious problem that requires professional diagnosis and therapy. Without such treatment, speech difficulties can cause significant problems for the growing child and may even persist into adulthood.

Unfortunately, most parents are slow to seek professional help for their children with speech disorders. Sometimes, the delay occurs because close family members, especially siblings, are able to decipher what the youngster is saying, even though it is largely incomprehensible to people outside the family. Professional diagnosis and treatment for speech problems are commonly delayed also because of the common belief that children will "grow out of it." This is not true, and some children pay a high price for the delay.

One bright 3-year-old we know became so frustrated and angry by constant requests to repeat herself, she stopped talking to anyone but her closest family members. When asked her age, she used three fingers in lieu of a verbal response; when questioned about anything more complicated, she would blush and hide behind the closest parent. Even at preschool, her inability to articulate words kept her from participating in classroom discussions, and she usually played alone.

Her parents, who are both physicians, did not recognize her serious speech disorder. As a result, they did not seek help from a speech therapist until just before her fourth birthday.

Before therapy can begin, the specific nature and cause of the problem must be defined. A child with an abnormally small vocabulary has a language problem and requires different treatment from a child with a speech disorder, in which case the vocabulary is normal but the child cannot articulate the words in an understandable manner. (The term "language" refers to the sounds, symbols and rules that people share for exchanging messages; speech is simply one way of expressing language, which can also be expressed through writing and signing, for example.)