Twelve minutes of conversation a day

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

But what was once understood by itself is no longer so, and when a leading German health insurance company recently decided to publish a book for parents called “Talk to Me!” Designed to encourage them to talk to their child, she was not joking. The reason for this is obvious: the cost of teaching one in three or four children in a special school for children with speech impairments would be prohibitive for the health insurance fund, not to mention the fact that there would not be enough specialists to service such an influx. Therefore, all observers are unanimous in the opinion: prevention is necessary!

And for this you need to know what caused this phenomenon, and it turns out that there are many reasons for this. In press interviews, as well as in the appendix to the book, experts, for example, phoniatrist Manfred Heinemann and Theo Borbonus (head of a school for children with speech impairments in Wuppertal), insist that the increase in speech development disorders should be associated not so much with medical factors. how much with the changed socio-cultural conditions in which today's children grow up. Hearing impairment due to medical reasons, of course, has increased slightly, according to Heinemann, but nevertheless, doctors unanimously cite the growing silence in families as the main reason.

Parents "have less time for their children today: on average, a mother only has about twelve minutes a day for a normal conversation with her child," says Borbonus

“High unemployment, increased pressure from competition and rationalization, painful failures of social insurance systems,” he continues, “all this makes a person more depressed, speechless, indifferent.” Teachers and parents, according to Heinemann, no longer cope with sudden social changes, with the stresses and conflicts over divorce, with single parent families and professional problems.

Television harms speech development

But the most potent factor harming the development of speech in children is television, which consumes more and more time from both parents and children. Net viewing time (which should not be confused with much longer TV hours) in 1964 averaged 70 minutes per day in Germany, in 1980 for adults this figure rose to two hours, and in 1998 crawled to the mark (again for adults) 201 minutes a day. This is equivalent to about three and a half hours of "radio silence" between parent and child.

And family conversations turn out to be completely impossible if cute children are also presented with their own TV. Forced isolation forces them to noticeably increase their TV consumption, as shown by statistics.

Children between the ages of three and thirteen without their own television have 100 minutes of viewing time per day, while children with their own television have more time. In 1999, Inga Mor, authorized by the radio station "Free Berlin" for work with young people, came to the conclusion: "Children with their own television watch programs for more than three and a half hours every day." (It makes you wonder when she says that these kids enjoy watching adult programs the most on their evening and nighttime programming!)

It is especially awful that in 1998 this already affected the youngest children (from three to five years old) - those who watch TV from two to four hours daily, there were 10.3%, and another 2.4% watched programs on four to six hours or more. Heinemann notes on this: "But these children, according to our information, also watch videos and play on a pocket electronic toy or on a computer." It should be added: and just they have speech disorders that need to be seriously treated.

Meanwhile, the damage to the development of speech in children is by no means only the silence in front of the TV screen. Heinemann points out that in this regard, television, with its "predominance of visual information" itself, is detrimental to children.

“Even children's programs,” he complains, “are often completely far from reality, and the rapid changes of frames do not give the child the opportunity to properly follow the course of the action. The programs are often built stereotypically and therefore do not in any way encourage the child to develop his own imagination and creative abilities. In addition, it is private broadcasters that are dominated by action films and showing scenes of violence. Therefore, the speech of children in games with peers becomes scarce - they limit themselves to exclamations like those found in comics, incoherent scraps of phrases and ridiculous imitations of noises, accompanying them with robotic movements.

But the TV screen not only interferes with the formation of speech and articulation. It blocks both spontaneous, creative play and natural movement, preventing children from providing the stimuli they need to develop motor skills and senses. The lack of a variety of varying stimuli from the environment can lead to a deficit in the formation of brain functions, warns Borbonus, and at the same time creativity, imagination and intelligence suffer.

Based on many years of pedagogical experience, the scientist states that due to the lack of primary stimulating stimuli in today's children, it is more and more difficult to form functions for the perception of internal and external states - warmth, balance, movement, smell, touch and taste. This scarcity is only exacerbated by the lack of playable playgrounds and stimulating environments in large cities. Therefore, Borbonus calls for the creation of an environment that stimulates the development of children. “Human warmth, games and movement are indispensable,” says his conclusion.