First, we define ‘normal’.
According to
WordNet
found in Dictionary.com, ‘normal’ is conforming with or constituting a
norm or standard or level or type or social norm; not abnormal;
American
Heritage Dictionary found in Dictionary.com, ‘normal’ is conforming
with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type;
typical;
American
Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary found in Dictionary.com,
‘normal’ is being approximately average or within certain limits in e.g.
intelligence and development;
Kernerman
English Multilingual Dictionary (Beta Version) found in
Dictionary.com, ‘normal’ is usual; without any special characteristics
or circumstances.
Speaking of children below age five
years old, development of each and every child is different. So, which child is
considered going through a normal development and which is not and considered
an ‘abnormal’ child? Does it necessarily
mean that when a child is not going through the average rate of development of
a child, that child is considered abnormal and should be treated as abnormal;
there as, should be given a special treatment or special therapy to speed up
the child’s development?
If a child is normal in all medical
tests like hearing, vision, movement and everything else are normal except the
development of speech, does not mean that the child is mute and needs ‘special’
help? Some children do develop speech late.
Below is an article by Thomas Sowell about “Late-Talking
Children”:
LATE-TALKING
CHILDREN
by Thomas Sowell
Perhaps the best way
to begin this discussion of children who talk years later than the norm is the
way I began my book Late-Talking Children, by asking: With all the
medical and scientific writings available on children who talk late, why should
there be a book written on the subject by someone with no pretensions to either
medical or scientific expertise? A related question is: Why should anyone
read it-- especially those who do have medical and scientific expertise?
This book contains new information about a certain
category of late-talking children that, frankly, I stumbled upon willy-nilly by
studying a group that I never intended to form in the first place. Let me
begin at the beginning. In May 1993, I wrote a newspaper column about my
son when he graduated from college with a degree in computer science. In
this column I mentioned that he was almost four years old before he began to
talk and also that he showed early signs of a remarkable memory and later signs
of great ability in mathematics, computers, and other things requiring
analytical thinking. From around the country letters began to pour in
from parents and grandparents of similar children-- similar not only in talking
late but also in showing exceptional analytical abilities. It later
turned out that there were still more similarities between many of these
children and my son.
A few of these letters were from parents whose children were
now grown and had turned out fine. Most, however, were from parents still
baffled, frustrated, and apprehensive about a child who seemed bright and
healthy, but who just did not talk. Many of these children were three,
four, or even five years old. Their parents wanted me to tell them why--
and what they needed to do in order to get these children to talk. I had
to write back and tell these parents that I could not do either of these
things. Nor could I simply tell them to consult medical or other experts
because most had already consulted experts and the experts were as baffled as
they were. However, I did promise to survey the medical and scientific
literature, and then write back to tell the parents what I had come up with.
My thought was that my research assistant might spend a
morning at the computer, searching various sources of information, and then,
that afternoon, I would send out a list of books and articles she had
found. Nothing of the sort happened. Long lists of books and
articles on children's speech problems came out of the computer, but absolutely
nothing on very intelligent children who talk late. A few titles here and there
sounded promising but, after my assistant obtained copies of the articles or
books and we read them, there was absolutely nothing there on the specific
subject we were seeking.
There was a large literature on late-talking children in
general, and the many other serious and often enduring problems among such
children. Some children talked late because of hearing problems, mental
retardation, autism, or other disabilities. But I could not find a single
article on late-talking children with high intelligence. A couple of
years later, Professor Steven Pinker of M.I.T.-- a leading authority on
language development-- was kind enough to have the literature searched again
for me and again there was no literature on the kind of children the parents
were writing to me about.
In the summer of 1993, however, whenever there was a break
in the on-going work of the office, my assistant would try new sources and new
search strategies but the end result was always the same: We could find nothing
about intellectually outstanding children who talked late. There were
isolated individual stories about Albert Einstein and others, but no systematic
research. What was originally conceived of as a one-day effort stretched
out into weeks and then into months. Finally, in September 1993, four
months after my column about my son, I sent out a form letter to the dozens of
parents who had written me, saying that I had come up with nothing.
However, rather than leave them completely high and dry, I offered to let them
to exchange addresses through me, in case they wanted to share experiences with
one another, and especially to contact parents of late-talking children who
were now grown.
This too seemed like a small thing to do and a one-shot
deal. I had no idea what it would lead to, nor any expectation that it
would lead to anything involving me. But it turned out that I was very
mistaken again. Most of the parents accepted my offer to be put in touch
with other parents of late-talking children, so an informal group of
correspondents formed.
The initial members of this group were about two dozen
parents, scattered around the country. They began to send long letters to
each other, with copies to me, about their children's development and the
problems they encountered at home, in nursery schools and in preschools.
A few phoned one another or me. Many of their stories were quite
moving. However, after several months, I began to wonder if there was not
some kind of pattern in these families and in these children. In
retrospect, I can see that it took me a very long time to notice.
First of all, it seemed to me that the parents were
generally above average in intelligence and that the families seemed to contain
people concentrated in atypical occupations. Pilots were the first I
noticed. There were only a few but still it seemed like a lot for such a
small group. Then there were the engineers, computer specialists,
scientists, physicians, accountants, and-- heaven help us-- economists.
Moreover, the children themselves seemed like the kind of people who might grow
up and go into such analytically-oriented occupations. All this was still
just impressionistic speculation. Eventually, however, after several months,
it finally occurred to me to send out a questionnaire to see if a survey of the
group as a whole would validate these impressions.
The first thing that struck me about the replies was that,
in more than half the families, the child had a close relative who was an
engineer. This had a special impact on me because my brother is an
engineer. I immediately blamed him for my son's talking late. Those
children who did not have an engineer as a close relative almost always had a
family member who was in some other occupation requiring high levels of
analytical ability. Three-quarters of the families had either an
engineer, a mathematician, or a scientist among the child's close relatives and
it was not uncommon for there to be more than one. Nor were the remaining
families lacking in people with analytical occupations. Accountants were
almost as numerous as engineers and there were also computer programmers,
pilots, economists, and physicians.
There was more. In a large majority of the families,
there was someone who played a musical instrument, in some cases multiple
musicians and, in a substantial minority of the families, there was a
professional musician. This too tied in with my personal experience: My
father played the piano, as did his sister, who also composed musical
pieces. The other striking thing about this group, which I had known
before the survey, was that the great majority of the children were boys.
In fact, the first 30 children in the group were male before the parents of twin
girls in Alabama
joined.
It seemed to me that this information was something that
ought to be investigated further by someone with medical or scientific
expertise-- and I set about trying to find someone like this who would be
interested in my data and in other information in my files about these children
and their families. Despite following many leads and suggestions, I was
completely unsuccessful in finding someone from such a background to take an
interest in this group-- except for contacting Professor Pinker at M.I.T., who
was very helpful not only in having the literature searched for me but also in
having one of his students provide me with an annotated bibliography of
writings related to speech development and brain development. Finally, by
1996 I realized that if a book were going to be written on this subject, I
would have to be the one to write it.
By this time the group had grown to 55 families scattered
across 24 states and most had joined after the 1994 survey. A new and larger
questionnaire was prepared, based in part on things I had been reading and
considering in the previous two years. Forty-four of the 55 families in
the group filled out the detailed questionnaire I sent them. These 44
families represented 46 children because two of the families had two children
who talked late. The results of this 1996 survey, which are presented in
the book, confirmed the patterns found in the earlier survey and brought out
new information about both the children and their families.
Most of the children in our group began talking around age
four.2 Most of the parents began to be
seriously concerned about their not talking around age two3-- which means that there were usually
two long years of anxiety, during which relatives, friends, teachers, day care
providers, and others often added to the parents' apprehensions with dire
opinions or even diagnoses of retardation or autism, for which they had neither
the evidence nor the professional training to evaluate evidence. Seldom
were physicians the source of these worries but neither could physicians do
more than counsel patience when medical examinations failed to turn up anything
wrong. Meanwhile, the parents were often being told by others that they were
"in denial" or that the parents had themselves caused the child's
late talking by always anticipating their needs-- or other theories without
foundation.
While few of the children in our group had taken I.Q. tests,
there were many other indicators of their mental ability. Three quarters
of them were rated in the top category-- "unusually good" -- at
puzzles.4 None had a memory rated as low
as "average" and most rated in the top category-- "extremely
good"-- with many parents putting exclamation points or other comments
about the extraordinary memories of their children. Nor can this be
dismissed as parental over-optimism, for they rated nearly twice as many of
their children as either "average" or "clumsy" in physical
skills as those rated "above average."5
While most of the children in our group were too young to
have taken the Scholastic Aptitude Test, three of them had-- and all three
scored above the 95th percentile on the mathematics portion. There were
also many anecdotal indicators of unusual intellectual ability among these children.
Most were considered remarkable for their ability with jigsaw puzzles,
including some who could put together puzzles with a couple of hundred pieces
when they were two or three years old. One of the preschoolers helps his
mother when she has trouble with Windows 95.
Although I was unable to find anything in the medical or
scientific literature on such children, I was able to find some suggestive
facts in the literature on high-I.Q. individuals in general. Although
high-I.Q. people are usually healthier than members of the general population,
nevertheless there are certain physical anomalies that are more common in those
whose mental abilities are substantially above the norm.
Allergies and other immune system disorders are much more
common in people with unusual intellectual ability. A survey at a meeting
of Mensa, the international society for people with very high IQs, showed that
31 percent of those present reported "severe or multiple allergies."6 A Johns Hopkins
University study of
intellectually precocious youngsters showed that four-fifths of them were
either allergic, myopic, or left-handed-- or some combination.7 Other studies have likewise
found left-handedness to be more common among mathematicians and childhood
myopia several times as common among intellectually precocious children as in
the general population.
Why would a group of people so generally more healthy than
average have much higher incidences of these particular afflictions? Some
of those who are familiar with brain research believe that a particular portion
of the brain may develop to an unusual extent at the expense of other portions.8 Since the immune system and the
optical system are controlled from the brain, and the right hand from the left
hemisphere, a higher incidence of allergies and other immune system disorders,
and of childhood myopia, among people with very high IQs would be consistent
with this belief. So too would a higher incidence of left-handedness
among mathematicians, if the analytical regions of the left hemisphere have
taken over resources that would otherwise be available for the control of the
right hand. It is also known that speech is, for most people, also
controlled from a particular region of the left hemisphere. Could it,
like right-handedness, also fall victim to a highly developed analytical sector
of the brain?
When Einstein's brain was autopsied, it was found to weigh
no more than average, but a particular region of his left hemisphere was twice
the normal size. There is no way to know if that was why he was late in
talking but perhaps people with expertise in this area might research the
possibilities. Incidentally, Einstein was not the only nuclear physicist
to talk late. So did Edward Teller and Richard Feynman. Three known
late-talkers were among those who created the first nuclear bomb.
The overwhelmingly male sample of late-talking children in
our group is also consistent with this explanation. Recent research has
shown that the brains of males and females differ in formulating speech, as
well as in not having its functions as localized.9
The main purpose of the book Late-Talking Children is
not to promote these speculations, however. It is to report certain facts
about a particular set of late-talking children, who are undoubtedly a minority
among late-talking children, and to hope that others with medical or scientific
expertise will carry the research much further than I can.
What parents of such children most need to know is that they
are not alone. There is a sense of utter isolation when you have never
seen another child like yours and when no one can either explain what is
happening or tell you what to do about it. Yet these children are not
unique, nor even as rare as they might first appear to be. When my son
was talking late, I was unaware of any other child like him-- and yet my
college room mate had talked late, though I did not know that at the
time. My colleague Walter Williams talked late, though Walter himself did
not know that until he mentioned my study to his mother and she informed
him. The man who works on my computer happened to overhear me talking
with some parents in our group and told his mother about these unusual
children-- whereupon she said to him: "Like you." Since then,
she has written me that his first words were: "Look at that school
bus!" My college room mate-- now a professor of mathematics-- likewise
began talking in complete sentences, though most of the late-talking children
start first with a few simple words and then progress like other children,
though years later.
Anecdotal evidence obviously has its limitations. But
the large amount of it is quite surprising, in view of how few parents or their
physicians are aware of other very bright, late-talking children. Even
though I have been a colleague of Edward Teller for 17 years at the Hoover
Institution, and bought a house from him back in 1981, I was unaware that he
talked late until this past April, when his assistant encountered my assistant
at the Xerox machine and noticed that she was carrying a book jacket for Late-Talking
Children.
Within the past year, when I have mentioned the book I was
writing at large gatherings, usually someone present would mention a child very
much like those I was describing. I learned of two such people during one
week in New Zealand
last fall. Both are now grown. One is a mathematician and the other
an engineer. A few days after I learned that Dr. Teller had talked late, I
encountered a professor of mathematics at Wabash
College in Indiana who also talked late. A month
afterwards, I mentioned my project at a dinner given by people at Dartmouth and two of
those present said that they had talked late. Two weeks ago, I was being
interviewed on a call-in program on a Wisconsin
radio station. In the space of one hour, four mothers of late-talking
boys phoned in. All four were from families with engineers. A woman
who had talked late also phoned in-- and mentioned that she came from a family
with a similar background. Within the past two weeks, my wife has
mentioned to people that she worked with that she was going to be away,
accompanying me on a book tour for Late-Talking Children. Two more
examples of such children were volunteered. One is now in medical school
and the other plays in a symphony orchestra. One of the two publishers to
whom I mentioned this book last year said that he had talked late-- and that he
had been a professional violinist before he went into publishing.
If all of this sounds upbeat, two things must be kept in
mind. First, the late-talking children in our group is a biased sample because
people wrote me in response to a newspaper column in which I revealed other
aspects of my son besides his late-talking, so that I attracted parents whose
children shared these other characteristics as well. Later, when I wrote
columns about similar children in our group, the same selection bias was at
work. It would be cruel to offer false hopes to parents whose children
are deaf, retarded, autistic, or who suffer from other disabilities. Much
research indicates that late-talking children in general often have other
serious and lasting problems. Some of that research, however,
distinguishes between children who simply talk late, but who clearly understand
what is being said to them and have no other known medical problem. These
children have been found to turn out well in future years, in contrast to
children who neither speak nor understand what is being said to them, who often
have a much more grim future ahead of them. This book, however, is the
first to study children with above average intelligence and who talk years
late. I certainly hope that it will not be the last.
The other thing that must be kept in mind is that most
parents of late-talking children are unaware of what has been discovered in our
group and are going through the same sense of utter isolation that most of the
parents in our group experienced. Moreover, there is no way for them to
know whether their own child is like those in our group or those for whom the
future is far less bright. For these parents, a medical examination of
the child should be the highest priority-- and most parents will seek such
examinations.
Unfortunately, there are all sorts of non-medical people
volunteering opinions and labels for these children. When relatives and
friends do this, it is bad enough for an already burdened parent, but when
school systems put labels like "retarded" or "autistic" on
a child, the consequences can be not only devastating to the parents but
long-lasting in its effects on the child, who is likely to be shunted off into
programs that lead nowhere-- and from which he is unlikely to emerge.
Schools get substantially more money for children who are
labeled abnormal in ways for which there are programs. Although many
school systems offer free evaluations, this can be the most costly free thing
these parents ever receive, for it can change the course of their child's life
in ways that may be virtually impossible to undo. A medical examination--
or preferably two independent medical examinations, given the seriousness of
what is involved-- will undoubtedly cost, but it will cost much less than the
alternative.
As just one example of what labels can do, let me mention a
little boy in our group named Billy. Born in 1990, his early development
was on schedule or a little ahead of schedule on everything except
talking. He could use a videotape cassette recorder and a computer before
he was three, but he was not yet talking until he was three. By that
time, a psychologist had labeled him was having "pervasive development
disorder," even though the only thing behind schedule was his
talking. It jolted Billy's parents, who knew that PDD meant autism.
Other professionals reached different conclusions about him
but the autism label stuck. Mixed signals from these professionals were
matched by mixed signals from relatives. Told that they were "in
denial," Billy's parents joined a support group of parents of autistic
children. Here again, there were mixed signals. One of the parents
in the group pulled Billy's parents aside to say that she could not see a
single sign of autism in Billy.
Fortunately, Billy's preschool teacher came to observe him
in a session with autistic children. She went ballistic,
shouting:"TAKE HIM OUT OF HERE! THEY ARE GOING TO UNDO ALL OF THE PROGRESS
WE HAVE MADE WITH HIM! THIS IS NOT BILLY!" Now the mother became convinced
that Billy was not autistic-- and was angry that the therapists were so blindly
following the psychologist's label, rather than what they were seeing in front
of their own eyes. Finally, a well-known specialist on autism declared
that Billy was not autistic. Even then, however, the label
continued to haunt him.
Billy began to keep one eye closed and the other eye open--
sometimes the left and sometimes the right, but he avoided having them both
open at the same time. When his mother phoned his pediatrician about
this, seeking a referral to an ophthalmologist, the pediatrician was reluctant
to give a referral, apparently thinking that this was just weird behavior from
a child already carrying the autistic label.
Only when Billy's mother exploded in anger did the
pediatrician refer her to a pediatric ophthalmologist who had "worked with
kids like Billy." What the ophthalmologist discovered was that Billy
had double vision-- and that he would have gone blind in one eye if it had not
been caught in time. Fortunately, it was readily corrected with glasses
and Billy general behavior improved dramatically, once he could see
normally. Apparently this is a common reaction.
This ophthalmologist had indeed treated autistic children--
and he assured Billy's mother that Billy was not one of them. The boy's
progress has continued and he began to take piano lessons before he was six
years old. His mother says that he likes to "show off by playing
songs with his eyes closed, to impress the teacher." Although this
story seems to have had a happy ending, it is also a sobering reminder of the
dangers of hasty labels.
Another mother in our group, whose boy who was still not
talking on his fourth birthday, and who had also been late in walking, and who
drooled, told of friends and relatives who warned her that someday she might
have to have him "put away." However, he is now grown and has
an I.Q. in the top one percent.
There are of course no guarantees, even for the children in
our unusual group, much less for late-talking children in general. But
parents whose children's medical examinations have given them a clean bill of
health should at least know that there is often light at the end of the
tunnel-- sometimes very bright light.
N O T E S
1.
©
Thomas Sowell.
2.
Thomas
Sowell, Late-Talking Children (New York: Basic Books, 1997), pp. 78-80,
166.
3.
Ibid.,
pp. 80-81, 163.
4.
Ibid.,
pp. 84, 167.
5.
Ibid.,
p. 164.
6.
Miles
G. Storfer, Intelligence and Giftedness: The Contribution of Heredity and
Early Environment (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), pp. 386, 389.
7.
Ibid.,
p. 385.
8.
Miles
G. Storfer, Intelligence and Giftedness: The Contribution of Heredity and
Early Environment (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), pp. 391-393.
9.
Christine
Gorman, "How Gender May Bend Your Thinking," Time, July 17,
1996, p. 51; Bennett A. Shaywitz, et al, "Sex Differences in the
Functional Organization of the Brain for Language," Nature, 16
February 1995, pp. 607-609.