Review: Beyond Baby Talk: From Sounds to Sentences--A Parents Complete Guide to Language Development. Apel, Kenn and Julie

Written by two well known speech and language pathologists, Beyond Baby Talk: From Sounds to Sentences-A Parents Complete Guide to Language Development is an excellent resource for anyone interested in first language acquisition and the development of speech in children. Kenn Apel and Julie Masterson take the reader through the essential steps and checkpoints from birth through age five. They discuss the normal ranges of speech and language learning, with tips on how to help children progress.

Sponsored by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, this book details how children develop language from their earliest words to sentences. The authors promote the idea of parents as a child's first teachers and provide parents with a guide to understanding language development, along with ways in which they can interact with their children to promote language development. They include tips to evaluate and monitor a child's language development, understand environmental impacts on language, recognize thee signs of speech delays and methods of keeping your child on track.

Kenn Apel, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is a professor and chair of communication disorders and sciences at Wichita State University and a widely known specialist in childhood language. Julie Masterson Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is professor of communication sciences and disorders at Southwest Missouri State University and has over 100 publications and presentations at professional conferences. She has also developed computer software for clinical use by language professionals. Together with American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, they developed this book to be a comprehensive guide for parents and teachers to understand the use of language in the formative years.

My interest in this book came from two places. I purchased this book to look at normal language development as it relates to feral children but ultimately used it to relate to two of my children with speech delays. The charts and guidelines create a fool-proof communication with the reader. I gained a better knowledge of where my children are in their speech learning as well as taking a look at one of the reasons that language is a hard task for a neglected child to master. "The real boosts and edges to enriching your child's language development come from common, everyday, personal interactions between a child and the people who care about him." How sad the life where this key-figure is either unavailable or indifferent to her own child.

What is language exactly? Some assume that language is words; if we can speak we understand language. In the cases of feral children who learned some words and communication skills, we were told that language is more than words. The authors explain language as a rich, complex, adaptable system-it's the way we combine sounds, words, signs, and sentences to communicate our thoughts and understand others. Language is how we socialize and learn.

As is common in many theories of language development, a key point in this book is that the early years are crucial. Apel and Masterson focus on the first six years of a child's life. During these years a child acquires the foundation for a lifetime of communication. As a child grows, language remains central to most everything she does. The stronger a person's language skills the better she is able to connect with people, communicate feelings, pursue education, understand instructions and communicate in daily life. Language is a bridge for many aspects of our daily life.

An interesting section of the book dealt with birth order and language acquisition. Firstborn children are much more likely to have a larger vocabulary during the second year than subsequent children. In addition, two-thirds of firstborns will use a referential style of language acquisition, while two-thirds of later-born children use an expressive style of language development. On the other side, later-born children tend to exhibit advanced conversation skills when compared to firstborn children. One reason given for the difference in vocabulary between the two groups is that parents are more likely to speak directly to an only child. When other children are added to a family, the amount of speech aimed directly at each child is cut drastically. Researchers have studied the effects of older sibling's speech on their younger sibling, and have found that the greater the age-gap of the child, the ore facilitative the input to the younger child. School age children are more likely to use child-directed speech than are younger children.

Written to be understood by the average parent, Beyond Baby Talk: From Sounds to Sentences-A Parents Complete Guide to Language Development has filled a niche in the parenting market. It is a simple and effective tool for helping your child to learn language, and a great guide for knowing when something is not right. Filled with information that every parent should take the time to learn, this book does a wonderful job of conveying the message that every parent is important in their child's quest for language.