DEFECTIVE SPEECH IN CHILDREN
(3) THE SPEECH-SETTING PERIOD
The period from the age of 6 to the age of 11 (inclusive) is in truth
the Speech-Setting Period, for it is at this time that the child's
speech habits become more or less fixed, and his vocabulary, while
constantly developing, manifests tendencies which may be traced through
into the later life of the adult.
This Speech-Setting Period marks two very important events in the
speech development of the child. First, it marks the period of second
dentition or the time when the milk-teeth are "shed" and the new and
permanent teeth take their place. This is a critical period and
statistics show that there is a marked increase in speech disorders at
this time. The second event of importance, both to child and to
parents, is the beginning of the work in school. It must be remembered
that heretofore the child has been under the watchful care of the
parents during most of his hours, while now, with the beginning of his
work in school, he is having his first small taste of facing the world
alone--even if only for a little while each day.
Regardless of the attitude which the child takes toward his work in
school, this work presents new problems and new possibilities of danger
from a standpoint of speech development. A slight defect in utterance
which at home is passed over from long familiarity, is the subject of
ridicule and laughter at school. For the first time in the child-life,
the stammering or stuttering youngster may experience the awful feeling
of being laughed at and made fun of, without exactly knowing why. He
will have to face the questions of his thoughtless companions who will
attempt to make him talk merely for the sake of entertaining
themselves. To the child who stutters or stammers, this is torture in
its worst form. The humiliation and disgrace which the stammering child
must undergo on the way to school, in the school-yard and on the way
home again, is a tremendous force in the life of the youngster--a force
which may seriously impede his mental development, his physical welfare
and his progress in school. He finds himself unlike others, deficient
in some respect and yet not realizing the exact nature of his
deficiency or understanding why it should be a deficiency. He stands up
to recite with a constantly increasing fear of failure in his heart and
unless he is fortunate enough to have a teacher who understands, is apt
to fare poorly at her hands, also. Even in the case of the teacher who
does understand the child's difficulty and consequently permits written
instead of oral recitations, there is a constant feeling of inability
on the part of the child, a knowledge of being less-whole than those
about him, which saps the self-confidence so necessary to proper mental
development and normal progress. He furthermore misses much of the
value of the studies that he pursues, for, as a noted educator has
said, "In order for a child to remember and fix clearly in his own mind
the things he studies, those things must be repeated in oral
recitation." And this the stammering or stuttering child cannot do.
SENDING STAMMERING CHILDREN TO SCHOOL: With these facts in mind, the
question arises as to whether it is ever policy to send a stammering or
stuttering child to school, knowing that he is afflicted with a
speech-disorder. In the first place the parents who send a stammering
child to school exhibit a careless disregard for the rights of others
and a further disregard for the many children who must, of a necessity,
associate with this stammering child, with all the consequent dangers
of infection by imitation or mimicry. Speech defects of a remediable
nature among school children could be materially reduced by refusing to
allow children so afflicted to play or in any way associate with the
others who talk normally.
Aside, however, from the question of the parents' obligation to society
and to the children of others (which should be, in the end, a means of
protection for their own children, as well) there is the bigger and
more selfish aspect of the question, viz.: the effect on the child
himself.
No better suggestion can be given than that contained in "The Habit of
Success" by Luther H. Gulick, who says: "If you take a child that is
really mentally subnormal and put him in school with normal children,
he cannot do well no matter how hard he tries. He tries again and again
and fails. Then he is scolded and punished, kept after school and held
up to the ridicule of the teacher and other students. When he goes out
on the playground, he cannot play with the vigor and skill and force of
other children. In the plays, he is not wanted on either side; he is
always 'it' in tag. So he soon acquires the presentment that he is
going to fail no matter what he does, that he cannot do as the others
do and that there is no use in trying. So he gives up trying. He quits.
"That is the largest element in the lives of the feeble-minded--that
conviction that they cannot do like others, and is the first thing they
must overcome if they are to be helped. There is no hope whatever of
growth, as long as they foresee they are going to fail."
The futility of trying to "cram" an education into a subnormal child
has never been better expressed than in the statement quoted above.
There is nothing to be gained by insisting that a child who is ill,
attend school--and it should be remembered that so far as school is
concerned, the child who stutters or stammers is just as ill as the one
with the measles, save that the illness of the stammering or stuttering
child is chronic and persistent, while that of the other is temporary.
CHANCES FOR OUTGROWING AT THIS AGE: The opportunities for the
stammering or stuttering child to outgrow his trouble are about five
times as great in the Formative Period, between the ages of 2 and 6, as
they are in the Speech-Setting Period, from 6 to 11. In the former, as
previously explained, statistics show that about 1 per cent.--or one in
a hundred--outgrow their trouble before the age of 6, while after this
age the percentage drops to one-fifth of one per cent, or about one
person in every five hundred, which is a very small chance indeed.
In speaking of the tendency of parents to wait in the hope that speech
disorders will be outgrown, Walter B. Swift, A.B., S.B., M.D., has this
to say:
"This suggestion may frequently be offered, even by the physician. Many
people say, 'Let the case alone and it will outgrow its defect.' No
treatment could be more foolish than this. No advice could be more
ill-advised; no suggestion could show more ignorance of the problems of
speech. Such advisers are ignorant of the harm they are doing and the
amount of mental drill of which they are depriving the pupil. Nor do
they know at all whether or not the case will ever 'outgrow' its
defect. In brief, this advice is without foundation, without scientific
backing, and should never be followed."
ADVICE TO PARENTS: Parents of children between the ages of 6 and 11 who
stammer or stutter, should follow out the suggestions given in the
previous chapter, with the idea of removing the difficulty in its
incipiency if possible, or at least of preventing its progress. If by
the time the child is eight years of age, the defective utterance
remains, this fact is proof that the speech disorder is of a form that
will not yield to the simple methods possible under parental treatment
at home and the child should be immediately placed under the care of an
expert whose previous knowledge and experience insures his ability to
correct the defective utterance quickly and permanently.
In all cases after the age of 8, the matter should be taken firmly in
hand. There should be no dilly-dallying, no foolish belief in the
possibility of outgrowing the trouble, for whatever chances once
existed are now past. First of all, the child's case should be
diagnosed by an expert with the idea of ascertaining the exact nature
of the speech disorder, the probable progress of the trouble, the
present condition, the curability of the case and the possibilities for
early relief. A personal diagnosis should be secured where possible,
but when this cannot be brought about, a written description and
history of the case should enable the capable diagnostician of speech
defects to diagnose the case in a very thorough manner. The result of
this diagnosis should be set down in the form of a report in order that
the parent may have a permanent record of the child's condition and may
be able to take the proper steps for the eradication of the speech
disorder. With this information as to the child's case in hand, parents
should be guided by the advice of Alexander Melville Bell, one of the
greatest speech specialists of his age, who said:
"Stuttering and Hesitation are stages through which the stammerer
generally passes before he reaches the climax of his difficulty, and if
he were brought under treatment before the spasmodic habit became
established, his cure would be much more easy than after the malady has
become rooted in his muscular and nervous system."
Truly may it be said of the stammering child at this period, that
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads
on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows and in miseries."