Posted on 02/20/2022 1:50:00 PM PST by Kaslin
This is a story that first surfaced earlier in the week but hasn’t gained a lot of traction yet. (This is perhaps understandable given the situation in Ukraine, but also likely by intention.) For the first time in decades, the CDC has changed many of the recognized milestones for childhood development in terms of speech and cognitive functions. These markers are considered important in terms of recognizing when children aren’t progressing quickly enough, suggesting the potential need to determine if some sort of impairment is being observed and if the child may require greater medical attention. The curious thing about the changes instituted by the CDC is that in a majority of the cases, they have lowered the standards rather than raising them. I first noticed this news on Twitter, as so often happens these days.
The CDC just quietly lowered the standards for speech in early childhood development.
Now children should know ~50 words at 30mo rather than 24mo.
Instead of highlighting the harmful effects 😷s & lockdowns have had on children, the CDC just lowered the bar for milestones. pic.twitter.com/11QraOgFbJ
— BowTiedRanger (@BowTiedRanger) February 18, 2022
You can read the new guidelines here. One of the big changes that many critics are focusing on is the former guideline saying that children should normally know approximately fifty words by 24 months or two years of age. That benchmark has now been stealthily raised to 30 months. That’s not insignificant at all. It’s a 25% increase from the previous standard.
The Postmillennial examines the context in which these changes are taking place. It’s hard to ignore the growing body of reports showing that childhood development has been suffering as a result of various COVID protocols, raging from “virtual learning” environments to forcing children to wear face masks.
The update banner at the top of the page points those interested in the updates to the developmental milestones to a Pediatrics article outlining the research conducted that resulted in the change.
One of the authors of this study, Jennifer M. Zubler, said that the changes were made to the guidelines ensure that it reflects milestones that at least 75 percent of children can reach. Since children are no longer able reach these previously attainable milestones, they have been lowered.
The abstract states: “Application of the criteria established by the AAP working group and adding milestones for the 15- and 30-month health supervision visits resulted in a 26.4 percent reduction and 40.9 percent replacement of previous CDC milestones. One third of the retained milestones were transferred to different ages; 67.7 percent of those transferred were moved to older ages.”
It should go without saying that keeping the schools closed for as long as the government (and to a far greater extent, the teachers’ unions) did produced a significant negative impact on normal childhood development. The lack of interaction with their peers, frequently combined with families who had either technical or educational challenges in accessing the material and completing the assignments couldn’t have been helpful. And even for the children who were able to eventually get out of the house, wearing masks and being surrounded by both adults and children in masks robbed them of many of the nonverbal cues that are part of building language skills and social interaction tools.
While anecdotal, this thread from the brother of a pediatric speech therapist should be enough to give anyone pause.
My sister who is a speech therapist in MD just texted me: “The speech issues I see with three and four year olds that have been masked I’ve never seen before in 22 years. So much low muscle tone, drooling, unusual articulation errors on early developing sounds…”
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) February 9, 2022
In the earliest days of the pandemic, well before the first vaccines were rolled out, it is perhaps excusable that the government overreacted to COVID. There was so little known about the virus and how it would impact large populations that we likely erred on the side of caution. But as time went by and the database of knowledge grew, we never seemed to adjust. It quickly became obvious that school-age children were among the least likely to spread COVID or suffer the worst effects from it. But we just kept locking everyone up and telling them to constantly wear masks. Nobody seemed to care that cloth masks were the only ones that most people could get their hands on that most of them were virtually useless.
Someday the complete book on the American response to the arrival of this virus will be written. I can only hope that we managed to learn something after all of this time. That’s because we may have initially “erred on the side of caution,” but it’s becoming increasingly clear that we managed to err a lot.
This has to be tied to Dim attempts to socialize early childhood care — can’t have standards to meet.
Btw, it doesn’t matter, anyway, between 20 or 50 or 100 words. A kid whose parents only say “shut up” or “not now” will have the vocabulary of a seven year old at age 15.
In addition to father-less households, a huge problem with the poor urban black community is the absence of non-electronic stimulus for children. And it’s only getting worse with gaming taking over from television.
It’s not poverty. It’s parenting.
Why should anyone care about the CDC’s standards for children’s language development?
Doesn’t “CDC” stand for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?
Go control some diseases, losers.
The CDC decided losing 6 months of development is normal for 18 month old kids.
Just...decided.
This is all crapolla. All these so called “guidelines” from an organization that determines medicine based on political ideology.
These idiots have no clue about the real world. My wife’s cousin would not speak at all until he was 4. He retired a college professor. My daughter basically had nothing to say until she was almost 2. She understood a hellofa lot. Just had nothing to say about it. College at 16, deans list from first semester on.
People who have raised children know this type of development is all over the board. By the time they are a few years older, most of them are at the same place. Kids DO NOT progress at the same rate, yet usually get to the same place at the same time.
Never rely on political pin heads for any child upbringing advice. They are worse than worthless.
Nothing to see, here, ping.
Just more CDC excuses.
IBTFR$$
This won’t change that they have stifled the cognitive development of millions of children especially those children 6 and under.
Every damn govt agency does something other than what they are supposed to do. And we let them.
Among humans or primates?
Had to ask....
That's utterly preposterous. I know there are kids who don't speak that many words that 30 months, but even at one year a child usually understands a very large number of words.
Wonder if this is part of Klaus Scwab’s “The Great Reset”?
When my son was about two years old we were riding in the car with him behind us in his official government certified seat. He was babbling continuously, then we realized he was reciting a Thomas The Tank Engine episode word for word.
A retired Pre-K teacher that I know is now subbing to keep busy and make extra dough. She says that there is a huge increase in the number of children entering school with severe speech defects. And many of their parents do not want to take advantage of the free speech therapy in the schools - they see no problem with how their child speaks. “We can understand him - what’s the problem?”
“Now children should know ~50 words at 30mo [...] as a result of various COVID protocols, raging from “virtual learning” environments to forcing children to wear face masks.”
30-month-olds are doing virtual learning and being forced to wear masks?
I'll bet she's a lot different now!
LOL
Grey parrots have a LARGE vocabulary!
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