Alba Sánchez Blake

QUESTION:

I have an 18-year-old daughter who started college this year. She called me a few days ago worried because she mixing up letters and writing words incorrectly, asking if she should go to a specialist; since when she learned to read she often confused the "d" and the "b" when reading or writing.

My question is, can dyslexia appear and disappear in evolutionary periods?

Could we have missed a Dyslexia diagnose?

How will it affect her learning?

ANSWER:

Dyslexia is a learning disorder of neurological origin, and people who suffer from it have it throughout their whole lives. The severity of dyslexia can vary from one person to another, or even in the same person, so the same person may have learned techniques to compensate for their dyslexia during their education, either with the help of a speech therapist, teacher or by themselves, but have periods when their difficulties with reading and writing are more present.

Today, the vast majority of children who live in large cities, such as Madrid, begin Early Childhood Education before the age of 2, some even at 4 or 5 months of age, due to their parents' return to work. It is true that by starting education so early, many gain great benefits, such as learning to socialize with other children, not depending so much on their parents, to be more independent or to develop a more complete vocabulary. Babies are like sponges, and although we do not immediately see everything they are learning, little by little they show us all the skills they are acquiring thanks to the stimulation that we give them both actively and passively. Babies listen to us speak since they are in the womb, and they are able to recognize their mother tongue, showing more interest towards it, from the day of their birth.

From the beginning of this school year, children who go to school at such an early age, or who are even in the care of people other than their parents, may have one of the disadvantages of the use of masks: not being able to observe the articulation of who is speaking to them. This has a negative impact on the development of their language, since they need, in addition to listening to other people speaking, to see how their lips and tongue move when they speak. So now, more than ever, our babies are going to need extra language stimulation when we're at home to get much-needed visual support.

The way we speak and communicate is part of our personality, and even our identity. When it comes to speaking, there are people who have fluent and appropriate speech, with very occasional mistakes, and people who tend to make mistakes more frequently, or to repeat some syllable or word of their speech. We can all go from being more to less fluent depending on the moment, whether we are focused or have a prepared speech, presenting good fluency; or that we are tired or nervous, and we are more clumsy when it comes to speaking. Even so, there are people who tend to have poor fluency in speech on a chronic basis, presenting constant repetitions of syllables at the beginning of a sentence, taglines, or even gestures associated with when they get stuck in a word.

What is stuttering?

Stuttering, also called dysphemia, is a speech disorder. The speech of people who stutter is characterized by repetitions or prolongations of sounds, syllables, or words. Their speech can also present interruptions in the flow of speech, called blockages, have associated expressions or movements (spasms) and muscle tension in face and neck.

Stuttering often appears in children as part of language development, in the same way that it tends to disappear. It is more common in boys than girls, and approximately 25% of children will stutter when they start to speak. Still, only 1% of people who stutter in childhood continue to do so into adulthood. 

In many countries and in some regions of Spain, being bilingual, or even speaking more than two languages, is considered the norm. But in other regions of Spain, learning a second language is something for new generations, especially learning English as a second language, and many parents wonder if this is the best option, since sometimes they can worry about whether bilingualism is going to cause language development delay, or if it is advisable if your child has special needs. At the same time, they may worry about whether their child will be fully capable of working life if she or he only learned one language.

In this article, we are going to dismantle some false myths about bilingualism, and, based on scientific evidence*, explain why bilingualism, in any case, brings benefits in the cognitive development of people.

For a few months and due to COVID-19, mask use is mandatory whenever we are outside our home. Although the mask serves as a protective shield when communicating with others, so we don’t share bacteria or viruses with other people, it can have some negative consequences, such as having our voice damaged. The mask reduces the volume of our voice and distorts the sound of the words we use, so we are often forced to speak louder when we are using it. This continuous increase in the volume of the voice can cause the vocal cords to become irritated, and, if we do not take the necessary care, it can end in aphonia or dysphonia. 

When we speak of aphonia, we mean to lose the voice completely; while dysphonia refers to the alteration of our vocal quality, pitch or volume. Some examples of dysphonia are hoarseness or the inability to speak or sing in the range that one is used to, and it can be secondary to different disorders, such as nodules.

With the return to school and the beginning of the new year, some parents may have received from the teachers the suspicion that your child has dyslexia. Other parents may already suspect it, due to the reading and writing errors that you saw your son or daughter commit, or because of the great difficulties that he or she presented in this area.