The recent pandemic has brought to fore, a very important aspect of our child’s brain development. Delayed speech and hearing and behavioural issues have become much more common. We think this is because in the absence of the normal social vibe that we all are so used to – the chatting in parks, the screaming in swimming pools, the brains of our children have been forced to adapt to silence and cartoons in mobile phones and tablets. With significantly reduced exposure, the child’s brain is getting deprived of the opportunity to develop speech and language, something we take for granted but is in fact so critical.
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For a small child’s brain to learn to listen and subsequently speak, it is important that the brain is constantly bombarded with all kinds of spoken sounds along with facial expressions and actions. This continual exposure allows the brain to process sound and speech signals and eventually mature up to develop listening and speaking skills. In the absence of such stimulation, the brain starts to develop in a different direction using what is coming to it, whether it is silence / animation / videos etc.
With no opportunity or need to speak for anything, since everything is being made available without asking, the child’s communication skills start to lag behind. The brain does not complain. Instead, simply readapts. The result however is a child with no interest or skill in talking or listening. You don’t want this ever for your child.
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Dr Someshwar Singh | Photo Credit: Rainbow Hospital
Dr. Shomeshwar Singh, MBBS, MS (ENT), DLO (England), FRCS (Ireland), MD (London), Lead Consultant - ENT & Cochlear Implants
Madhukar Rainbow Children’s Hospital, Delhi
So, for our own sake and for the well being of our child, we need to keep chatting with the little ones. They need to hear us and see us all the time. They need us to talk to them and sing to them. They need us to ask them things and they need to try constantly to ask for things themselves. A mobile phone or a tablet displaying a 2-dimensional cartoon with no expectation of a two-way conversation will stop our child from troubling us in the short term but can potentially create issues like delayed speech development and other behavioural issues that will bite us hard in the longer term.
Our child’s brain needs us in our full glory to interact with them for them to grow up and mature. Once they have developed a lot of these skills, they will be mature enough to use devices like mobile phones. But not now.