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Jewish World Review / June 24, 1998 / 30 Sivan, 5758
Thomas Sowell
RECENTLY I RECEIVED AN ANGRY LETTER from a mother whose child has been diagnosed as autistic. She said that she wished that she had never read any of the columns in which I discussed late-talking children who turned out to be both normal and bright. She said
that my columns had been an "obstacle" to getting her child the therapy he needed
because they led her to believe that he would turn out all right without it.
Lest anybody else misunderstand me, I
When my own son was years behind schedule in talking, I had him examined by more
specialists than I can remember. So have almost all of the parents of late-talking
children that I know of -- and I have heard from more than a hundred families with such
children.
Too many wrong diagnoses have been made to rely on any given evaluation. Not only
should there be a second (or third or fourth) opinion, that opinion should not come
from someone who insists on knowing what the first opinion was. That kills the whole
point of a second independent evaluation.
Children who talk late can be retarded or geniuses or anywhere in between. The stakes
are just too high to assume anything. That is why multiple evaluations are so important.
These evaluations need to be independent -- not only independent of one another, but
independent of any schools or programs dealing with children. Public schools will
evaluate your child for free, but it can be the most costly free thing you ever receive.
Not only is the level of professional qualifications often low among the people who do
the evaluating, their objectivity is compromised by their ties to the schools and the
schools' on-going programs that need warm bodies to justify their existence. The same
is true of private programs that promise miracle cures for hefty fees.
Even independent and well-qualified professionals, not tied to any schools or
programs, cannot rise above the current state of knowledge on late-talking children. For
many kinds of conditions that cause children to be delayed in beginning to speak, much
is known and much can be done. But, for some other kinds of conditions, we have only
begun to scratch the surface.
For the kinds of exceptionally bright youngsters that
My book does not even pretend to be "the answer." What my study discovered were
some striking patterns among bright children who talk late and among their families.
Fortunately, Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University is a specialist in
childhood language disorders who is taking the research further. He was himself three
and a half years old before he began to talk.
The inadequacy of our current knowledge is not the worst of it. As Will Rogers once
said, "It's not ignorance that's so bad. It's all the things we know that ain't so."
This is an area where all sorts of people -- including relatives and friends -- are quick to
put labels on children who talk late. Too many professionals and semi-professionals are
quick to put labels on parents as well, saying that they are "in denial" if they do not let
themselves be stampeded into some "early intervention" program or therapy.
For some children, such intervention can be useful or even urgently needed, but for
others it can do more harm than good. The phrase "early intervention" covers such a
vast range of activities, run by people at all levels of competence and incompetence,
that you cannot be for or against it on a blanket basis.
Where there is some clearly identifiable reason for a child to talk late -- whether it is
deafness, mental retardation or autism -- parents eventually come to terms with it. It is
when the child is clearly very bright and with no medical problem that there is the
greatest uncertainty as to what to do. What should not be done is to assume anything or
to panic and let yourself be
An angry letter
have never said that parents should just assume
that everything will turn out all right when their child is late in talking. On the contrary, I
have repeatedly urged that every such child be examined by at least two professionals
and that at least one of them be a physician.
I studied in my book Late-Talking
Children, there was no literature at all on the subject before that book was published
last year. Not only did I fail to find any in my research, so did a noted language
authority who was kind enough to have the literature searched for me.
6/22/98: Sixties sentimentalism
6/19/98:Dumbing down anti-trust
6/15/98: A changing of the guard?
6/11/98: Presidential privileges
6/8/98: Fast computers and slow antitrust
6/3/98: Can stalling backfire?
5/29/98: The insulation of the Left
5/25/98: Missing the point in the media
5/22/98: The lessons of Indonesia
5/20/98: Smart but silent
5/18/98: Israel, Clinton and character
5/14/98: Monica Lewinsky's choices
5/11/98: Random thoughts
5/7/98: Media obstruction of justice
5/4/98: Dangerous "safety"
5/1/98:
Abolish Adolescence!
4/30/98: The naked truth
4/22/98: Playing fair and square
4/19/98: Bad teachers"
4/15/98: "Clinton in Africa
"
4/13/98: "Bundling and unbundling
"
4/9/98: "Rising or falling Starr
"
4/6/98: "Was Clinton ‘vindicated'?
"
3/26/98: "Diasters -- natural and political"
3/24/98: "A pattern of behavior"
3/22/98: Innocent explanations
3/19/98: Kathleen Willey and Anita Hill
3/17/98: Search and destroy
3/12/98: Media Circus versus Justice
3/6/98: Vindication
3/3/98: Cheap Shot Time
2/26/98: The Wrong Filter
2/24/98: Trial by Media
2/20/98: Dancing Around the Realities
2/19/98: A "Do Something" War?
2/12/98: Julian Simon, combatant in a 200-year war
2/6/98: A rush to rhetoric
