Palm Beach therapist sees increase in children’s speech delays during COVID-19
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say putting a face mask on your child is a critical tool in slowing the spread of COVID-19, however, some in the health community are now sounding an alarm.
Therapists say they are seeing children with speech delays.
“This has been a very challenging year,” said Jaclyn Theek, a clinic director and speech-language pathologist at the Speech and Learning Institute in North Palm Beach.
She said that during this pandemic, her speech therapy clinic has seen an enormous shift in the ages of its patients. Before the pandemic, only 5% of patients were babies and toddlers, while today it’s soared to 20%. Many parents call it “COVID-delayed.”
“We’ve seen a 364% patient increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers from pediatricians and parents,” Theek said.
When asked if they are children having a difficult time speaking, Theek said they are “speech-delayed.”
Babies start learning how to speak by reading lips at as young as 8-months-old. So when lips and faces are covered up by masks, therapists say for some kids, they can work around the mask and still learn to speak perfectly fine. But for others, it can cause speech delays.
To compound this problem, some places are requiring speech therapists to be masked while doing speech therapy, which makes it effectively useless.
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1484651659263287297
This hits very close to home for me.
My son is very smart. He’s 7 years old and in the second grade. He’s doing 4th grade math (multiplication, division, and fractions) and has read the first three Harry Potter books (6th grade level).
Early on, he was tested for special education because he had a language issue. He had an inner ear problem and was speech delayed. A minor surgery and speech therapy later, he’s doing advanced work.
Speech delays and communication problems can be confused for slow learning and intelligence deficiencies.
All of this brought about by mask mandates which turned out to be totally useless.
We let a bunch of septuagenarian and octogenarian politicians create a cult of fear around Covid that had destroyed every level of child development.
This shit makes my blood boil.
Ever story like this makes me want to put every Covidian to the wall for what they did to children.
So everything that the conspiracy theorist/anti-vaxx/maga hats were saying about hurting children was true….. again.
what’s the meme? the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is like 6 months?
Sharyl Attkisson says, in a recent interview, that the term “conspiracy theory” was coined as a way to denigrate news that was going against the “narrative” .
It is a quick little phrase.
The “conspiracy theory” epithet seeks to marginalize an investigative story, such as one that tries to expose a lying smear campaigner (funded by dark money).
People read a story denigrating honest reportage, post it on social media, and the investigative reporter will often lose all credibility.
For my part, I’m never going to denigrate the latest “conspiracy theory,” even though many of them seem too wild to be true.
I may not jump on the bandwagon, however, because the “conspiracy” du jour might actually be fake.
However, I don’t assume that it has to be fake.
“The Smear” was an eye opener. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know how bad.
Sorry for your troubles with your son.
I get very angry when I see small children with masks because of the potential harm in development.
Aaaannnddd In some areas it is STILL going on. Our biggest city, portland(maine) has reinstated mask mandates.. they also “voted” to raise minimum wage to 15 an hour and were amazed when retail raised thier prices! I just shake my head when I see idiots all masked up like good little commies..
There was an article recently, I think in the WSJ, that pointed out there is no evidence for the “masks protect kids” story. There have been studies of the prevalence of disease among school kids, but those tests ONLY covered schools where masking was mandatory. And from those studies the people writing the reports “concluded” that masks are helpful. The reality is that they have absolutely zero evidence that they are (a) helpful, (b) make no difference, (c) make things worse.
On the other hand, there is very definite documented evidence that putting masks on kids harms them in other ways that COVID.
The smart therapists test for both. One of our children was simultaneously in the gifted program and special education after maxing out the pre kindergarten tests and having a speech impediment.
I am still royally pissed at the continuing mask mandates in Oregon, exacerbated by the government wanting to change the rule from “emergency” to “permanent” . This may be the year the Dems lose their super majority because even the base is getting angry.
In a just world, there’d be indictments, arrests, trials, and….various sentences. All of this would make the Nuremberg trials look like a traffic court. In a just world.
The trials would probably have to be split up given the number of willful conspirators and collaborators. I say send the politicians and bureaucrats to stand Nuremberg and the “scientists” and “doctors” to stand trial at Dachau where their predecessors stood trial.
Post conviction I’ll provide ammo.