Speech
disorders and learning disabilities did not run in either my mom or dad's
family. Genius runs in my mom's side of the family. Most
people assume if you grew up across the street from factories you are
in low income housing not -in NJ.
In
the picture I am with my little niece Chelsea whose speech impairment
is mild in comparison to her brother's -and her cousins' (including Tanner and
Dakota who inspired the book The
Late Talker )
My
brother, sister and I were all born in Newark, NJ and after a year we
moved to a solid middle class town in NJ where we grew up across the street
from factories.
My
brother and I were both diagnosed with celiac disease as infants and spent
much of our childhood in hospitals -me especially. Both my brother
and I are also near sighted and we need to wear either glasses or contacts
to see clearly.
My
mom's family is from Germany and Austria, my Dad's family is from Spain
and Portugal. Everyone in both my mom and dad's family have excellent
vision, even to this day. None wear glasses except some of my older
relatives who now occasionally wear reading glasses. My older brother
was diagnosed very early as a "hyperactivity child" (ADHD)
by pediatric neurologist Arnold P. Gold, MD, who is today a Professor
of Pediatric Neurology at Columbia University Department of Neurology. My younger sister was diagnosed as having dyslexia.
My
brother, sister and I all got married and two of us moved away.
My brother moved to a "nice" area of NJ not far from where we
grew up and my sister and her family stayed in the same house that we
grew up in, across the street from those same factories.
My
husband and I moved first to Long Island NY and then to a "nice"
NJ town that is considered an upper middle class neighborhood. Soon
after our second son was born, about ten minutes from our house, black
ooze started rising up out of the ground. It ranged from a
foot to a couple of feet deep with had dead birds in it surrounded by
"chunks of exposed asbestos" so town officials closed the park.
The ooze was found by scientists from Rutgers and UMDNJ to be "concentrations
of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, phenol, cadmium, chromium and lead"
My
brother, sister and I each had two children. Out of the six children,
5 have speech impairments. If my children or nieces and nephews
stay in the same area -what would happen with their children, and others
like them?
One of the two of my nieces in the photo does (the one holding the "rolly
bug") as does her brother and other three cousins. The one
with the ring pop does not have a speech impairment.
There
has been a dramatic rise in communication impairments in the past ten
years -yet most people, even doctors, don't know about this epidemic-like
increase.
" the 2001 U.S. Department of Education statistics showed that in children
born in 1983 there were a total of 7,801 cases of speech or language impairment
. Among children born in 1994, this number had risen to 211,984 cases
( an approximately 30-fold increase ). In children born in 1983, there
were a total of 2,100 cases of autism . Among children born in 1994, this
number had risen to 8,325 cases (an approximately 4-fold increase )"
Mark
R Geier , MD., PhD and David Geier Journal Of American Physicians
and Surgeons AAPS Spring 2003 Volume 8 Number 1
The
rise in communication
impairments is not evenly distributed. The more industrial areas
have higher numbers of speech and language impaired children. For
example, there are more children with apraxia in certain areas. Apraxia is a severe speech impairment that used
to be considered rare. Before 9/11/2001, Manhattan had very low
numbers of apraxic children in comparison to NJ although in some instances
the families were only fifteen minutes away from each other.
One
of the members of Cherab - Marcy
Philips had been trying to start a support group in NYC (Manhattan)
for the past 3 years for apraxic children, and up till recently,
there had only been a handful of others that have called for support from
Manhattan. NJ has support groups or contacts all over the state
-and there still aren't enough support groups.
There
were children in NYC
with apraxia -but in most cases, they were from Long Island, Westchester
and the boroughs, they were not in Manhattan before. They are now.
Two
years after the World Trade Center tragedy, and the downplayed
toxic cloud that followed, Cherab now has many new families of parents
of two year old children diagnosed with apraxia living in Manhattan.
Is it possible that one or all of the carcinogens including asbestos,
PCBs, benzene, lead and mercury released into the environment (water?,
soil?, air?) of Manhattan two years ago somehow passed the placenta to
the developing children and is the cause of the apraxia? Are young
children with communication impairments similar to the canaries in the
coal mine of the old days, sending a strong warning of danger to
those that will listen? What will it mean if society continues to
overlook and ignore this growing warning?
The
children with apraxia today are presenting with a multi-faceted grouping
of symptoms which could include hypotonia, sensory integration dysfunction,
motor planning problems of the body, and/or digestive problems including
constipation etc.
If
you live in NJ -you know how it's "normal" today for children
to go to speech therapy...yet that should not be normal. Children
are our future -and silence is not golden.
As
serious a problem why is there so much silence about silent children?
Speech and language impairments often go undiagnosed and untreated
early on, and they often go undiagnosed and untreated in other disorders
as well. Speech and language disorders, including underlying
speech and language disorders in conditions from ADHD and autism
to dyslexia and DSI need to be addressed.
There
is little compassion for those with speech impairments -unlike the much
loved, popular speech-impaired canine Scooby Doo and the storybook nonverbal
Little Mermaid who chose to give up her voice to become a human, most
children with speech impairments are teased when they try to talk. The world is far more compassionate to those children with hearing, visual,
or mobility impairments than those with impairments of communication.
Even
though a small percentage of communication impaired children includes
autistic children where 75-80% are mentally retarded, the majority of speech
and language impaired children are presenting with normal to above average
intelligence.
Unfortunately most are not aware of this fact. Speech-impaired children
are frequently misdiagnosed, misjudged, and misclassified as mentally
retarded or autistic. As they grow older, even those with minor
impairments of speech are poorly viewed cognitively by others due to ignorance.
If
you don't live in NJ or a state that is high in numbers of these children
like NJ such as Ohio, Texas, the Carolina's, California etc. you still
should care as to what is causing this rise in speech and language disorders.
NJ is the extreme real life experiment of what happens when you take a
large amount of people and toxins put them all together in a small place.
If we don't find out what is causing the rise and stop it, it could be
playing soon at a town near you -and is probably starting already. As we are now seeing in Manhattan, apraxia and all the rest of these conditions
are not just on the rise in NJ.
One
approach that appears that what is helping the children from NJ, also
seems to be helping the children all over. What first worked for
my son Tanner around 4 years ago -an Omega 3/6 fish oil (also known as
essential fatty acids or EFAs, Omega 3 with a small amount of Omega 6,
polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs, long chain polyunsaturated fatty
acids -LCPs) first
helped those from
the NJ/NY area with apraxia, autism and other communication impairments. Through the Cherab online group spreading the word about this treatment helped
children from all over, with disorders and impairments ranging from
apraxia, autism, CP, all types of syndromes even rare genetic ones, myelin
disordered children -to those children with simple delays in speech - "just" late talkers.
A
professional anecdotal
report overseen by leading medical doctors and scientists was done
to validate that this rising group of communication impaired children
appears to need essential fatty acids. In almost all cases the
results of EFA supplementation are witnessed by both skeptics, professionals,
and parents alike within one day to three weeks -and the success rate
is close to 95% in toxic areas like NJ -lower in areas that are not toxic.
The results are typically moderate to dramatic -and in most cases when
taken off, the child either stops progressing, or regresses. When
put back on -the child surges once again. Perhaps the children that
don't respond to EFAs are the rare percentage who would have had the communication
impairment anyway -back when these conditions were rare. EFAs have
strong remyelinating properties. Are some of the toxins causing
delays to the myelin that the EFAs are helping with? Talk to your
child's MD (and yours) about whether starting supplementation of EFAs
if you live in a high toxin area might be a possibility. The formula
you are looking for to start is about 100 DHA, 150-250 plus of EPA, and
30-50 GLA from either borage seed or primrose oil.
Nobody
has the answer yet as to what is causing the rise in communication impairments
in the world, NJ -or in my own family for that matter. Out of the
six children my brother, sister and I had, again only one doesn't
have a speech impairment. No one else in our family or our in-laws
family have speech impairments.
We
moved to Florida last year. Now when people ask me why I'll have
them read this page. My heart breaks when we fly back to visit family
in NJ to hear my nephews and nieces that (almost) all have problems when
they speak.
Much
of the recent press on autism and other communication impairments is focused
on how much more prevalent these types of conditions are in males.
This may be true with a telescopic view. I believe that if we analyze
the whole picture as well we'll find that not only are females affected,
but that in areas that are high in numbers of communication impaired children,
adults are affected too, perhaps with conditions we believe unrelated. Again our silent young children may be canaries in the coal mine.
At a diner in New Jersey September
2003
God
please save all the children from New Jersey ...and the world, who are
canaries in the coal mine!
Children's Environmental Health Related Resources
Children's Environmental Health
Overview
Learn more about birth defects and environmental pollutants:
What You Should Know about Avoidable Risks of Birth Defects and Other Reproductive Disorders (pdf)
The Children's Environmental Health Network is a national multi-disciplinary organization whose mission is to protect the fetus and the child from environmental health hazards and promote a healthy environment.
The World Health Organization (WHO)
Children's environmental health
The Cherab Foundation is a world-wide nonprofit organization working to improve the communication skills and education of all children with speech and language delays and disorders. Our area of emphasis is verbal and oral apraxia, severe neurologically-based speech and language disorders that hinder children's ability to speak.
The Cherab Foundation is committed to assisting with the development of new therapeutic approaches, preventions and cures to neurologically-based speech disorders. We bring together parents and medical, research, and educational professionals. Please join us and help to give our children a smile and a voice.
Cherab Foundation
Communication Help, Education, Research, Apraxia Base
P.O. Box 8524 PSL, Florida 34952-8524
Phone: 772-335-5135
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Last Update: June 18, 2006
