Jean Gross believes in talking to children

10-1-2010

Jean Gross believes in talking to children

More children are learning to talk late and TV is a large part of the problem, the new communication czar says

Jean Gross can still recall the first word her eldest daughter uttered, just before her first birthday. “It was ‘arsh’, which I think meant ‘horse’,” she laughs. You don’t forget your child’s first word because it’s such a milestone.
Gross understands only too well the panic and guilt many middle-class mothers will be feeling after reading the research she published last week. On Monday, her first day as England’s first communication czar, Gross, a psychologist, released statistics showing that one in five boys (22%) and one in seven girls (13%)have trouble learning to talk. “Boys,” she says, “are always the vulnerable species.”

The average age at which babies utter their first word is 10 or 11 months, yet 40 of the 1,000 families polled five weeks ago for Gross’s study confessed that their children had not spoken until they were three. The worry is that a generation of toddlers is growing up inarticulate, thanks to a toxic mix of absent parents, poor daycare and electronic babysitters.

“Learning to talk is one of the most important skills a child can master, but these figures are worryingly high, especially for boys,” she says, frowning.

In 46% of the professional families surveyed the television or radio was left on “at least half the time the child was awake”; the comparable figure for poorer households is 65%. A fifth of the one-to-seven-year-olds polled shared a bedroom with a television and one in 10 had one next to the cot while they were a baby.

“Nearly half of affluent families have the television on half the time. That’s really high,” she says.

“I think there is a problem with people having television and radio and music on when children are learning to talk. Research has shown that in such situations the amount adults talk to young children falls away to almost nothing. Yet toddlers learn to talk by hearing words and practising them, often in a rhythm with one familiar adult.”

Under-twos, she adds firmly, should watch no more than half an hour of television a day — “and that includes DVDs”.

On a jollier note, the research also revealed that children’s most common first word was “dadda” and that other favourites included “cat”, “no” and “dog”. “But there were also some surprises,” she laughs. “‘Tits up’, for instance, and ‘Hoover’ and my personal favourite, ‘Oh dear’.”

I tell her that some people with whom I have discussed her findings have raised an eyebrow, pointing out that many clever children do not speak until they are older.

Gross nods. “It’s true,” she says. “Einstein didn’t speak till he was four. And this week when I went on Woman’s Hour to talk about the research, I got chatting to Rabbi Lionel Blue and he told me a delightful tale.

“A couple who had taken years to conceive a child eventually managed to produce one but the baby didn’t talk. Then, suddenly when he was three, they were all sitting at the dinner table and the child came out and said: ‘The milk is cold.’ The parents of course exclaimed, ‘How wonderful that you are talking! But why didn’t you speak before?’ He replied: ‘Until now everything has been correct’.”

The moral of the story, says Gross, is that it is true that there are some children who do not feel the need to speak — because their needs are being met. Nonetheless, she advises parents that if their children do not speak by the age of two they should take them to a language therapist. “You have nothing to lose,” she adds. After all, a third of such children go on to develop mental illnesses later in life.

The problem, she insists, is a real one — and it is getting worse. “We don’t have much statistical evidence but anecdotally head teachers are reporting more children coming into their nursery classes unable to string a sentence together or follow the most basic instructions.”

And it is not just toddlers. Teenagers too are suffering from being plugged into a world of electronic gadgets. “The average teenager uses just 800 words in daily communication,” she says. “That’s not enough to get a job.”

As Gross is at pains to emphasise, for a small core of children — “around 5% to 7%” — their shortcomings, from stammers to speechlessness, are nothing to do with their surroundings or how often their mother plays peekaboo with them. For these children, who include the autistic, their condition is biological. “That’s why I don’t want to over-emphasise the telly bit,” she tells me. “I don’t want parents to feel guilty.”

So what’s the answer? Screening for children when they start nursery and an army of speech therapists for three-year-olds with problems, she says. Shockingly, Gross’s survey reveals that one in four have no help at all because of the patchiness of language services.

Yet it is a widespread problem. In fact the existence of her job is thanks to some creative thinking by two politicians with personal stories to tell. Ed Balls, the schools secretary, raised eyebrows when he asked John Bercow, then a Tory MP, to review provision. But Balls was a stammerer as a child while Bercow’s oldest son, who has autism, had speech difficulties.

Gross was appointed as communication czar after Bercow’s review recommended that her post be created. “I’m in place till March 2012,” she says, working from an office in Blackfriars, central London with a staff of two and a salary “a little higher than that of the average GP”. She’s evangelical about making a difference before her time is up — but has one regret. The way her job is structured gives her no time to answer queries from worried parents directly.

Instead she advises going online to www.afasic.org.uk for advice. “Much though I’d love to talk to parents one to one I can’t get bogged down,” she says, “or I won’t be able to make things better for most children in the way I’m hoping to.” (Times)