Better Hearing & Speech Month is an important yearly campaign designed to help raise awareness about communication disorders, and every year we at REM do our best to help spread its message. The more people know about their child’s and their own communication norms and deviations — the more information they have — the greater control they can have over their own future.
“Communication Across the Lifespan” is this month’s theme, which ASHA breaks up by age. Week 1 (May 5 — 11), is all about communication disorders in infants, while week 2 (May 12 — 18) focuses on toddlers. Week 3 (May 19 – 25) highlights school-aged children, and week 4 (May 26 — 31) centers on adults.
Communication disorders are “wide ranging and can affect everything from comprehension to speech and language development,” we wrote in a previous blog. How well your child receives and processes information partly influences their education and mental progress. If something isn’t working properly, if the signals are getting mixed somewhere, help is needed as soon as possible.
This is why Better Hearing & Speech Month is important, especially when you consider that not only have “1 in 4 parents of U.S. children ages 0-8…had concerns about their child’s ability to communicate,” but that more than one quarter of these same parents — for a myriad of reasons — “have not sought treatment for their child.” This is something we want to fix. With early intervention and help by speech-language pathologists and audiologists, noticeable improvement over time is often more than possible.
Keep your eyes on our blog and webpage for more BHSM updates. We have a lot planned for this month.
