No Lasting Problems Seen for Late Talkers

Published: July 4, 2011

Parents often worry when their toddlers are slow to start talking, but a long-term study has found that these children have no more emotional or behavioral problems than others by age 5 — as long as they are otherwise developing normally.

The study, published online on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, followed children who were part of the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort Study, including 1,245 children whose speech was not delayed — they were using at least 50 words and could string two or three words together in a phrase — and 142 who had not reached this milestone.

The children were all born to women who were pregnant between 1989 and 1991 when they joined the study. The children were tracked through age 17.

At age 2, the children identified as “late talkers” were more likely than other toddlers to have behavioral problems. But there was no difference between the groups at ages 5, 8, 10, 14 and 17.

The paper’s lead author, Andrew J. O. Whitehouse of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, Australia, suggested that the early behavioral problems stem from a child’s frustration at being unable to communicate. “When the late-talking children catch up to normal language milestones, which the majority of children do, the behavioral and emotional problems are no longer apparent,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/health/research/05patterns.html?ref=pediatrics