First of all, let me preface this blog with the statement that to my knowledge there are no studies that verify or even suggest that Guatemalan born children as a group are more prone to language delays. Secondly, I’ve heard of several Guatemalan children that have no delays at all – on the contrary they spoke early and well.

But because this was an issue in Ella’s development and it keeps coming up in emails from readers, I’ve blogged about it several times before. My first blog covers the subject of delays and particularly in internationally born children. My second blog covers diagnosing language delays. I’ve also wondered about the connection between speech delays and learning sign language and discussed it in this blog.

So today as I read my emails I found one from a parent concerned about her daughter’s speech development, and it wasn’t hard for me to relate. She wanted to know how Ella’s speech development is going. She was told that her child didn’t speak because she had all her needs met and didn’t need to. Good grief, I can’t believe people still say that, and this was a diagnosis from an evaluation specialist from Early Intervention. Linguistics and speech pathology have come a long way in the last twenty years, and we have more intelligent answers for delayed speech.

Not content with this flippant and unprofessional answer, she began searching online and came across my blog about Ella’s speech delay. She mentioned that she worried about this everyday: was her daughter just a late talker or was there something physically wrong? When should she get speech therapy?

None of these questions can be answered easily with young children unless there is mental retardation, autism, or an obvious physical problem such as a hearing disability. I wasn’t surprised to hear that her daughter had chronic ear infections and was on her second set of tubes. But I’m sure of one thing; she can get a second opinion from a speech therapist who works at a local hospital, rehab center, child development center or private company. In addition, her ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) doctor can test her daughter’s hearing.

As parents we often have to persist to get the answers we seek and assistance we need for our children. If there is something in our child’s development that doesn’t sit well with us after we’ve done some reading and research, it is time to look into it.

If you want to know approximately where your child should be in speech development at certain ages you can look at Kidsource and American Family Physician.


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