Building Better Listening Skills: What It Takes For Toddlers To Understand (Part 1)

Children who don't understand words can't USE words to talk.

In this episode I introduce what's behind LISTENING SKILLS, so you can support your toddler during everyday activities. 

There are AUDITORY ASPECTS that are being "honed" with every interaction - building his capacity to understand and learn through his toddlerhood.

Some aspects include: 

• Auditory Attention
• Auditory Discrimination
• Auditory Memory
• Auditory Sensitivity
• Auditory Figure-Ground
• Language Processing  

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Transcript

Erin: 0:00

But when we look at receptive understanding, auditory processing, then we have to ask ourselves, what happens to that signal once it's, taken in by the outer ear is turned into mechanical energy in the middle ear. And then what happens when it travels along the auditory nerve through the brainstem and then eventually reaches the brain. Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers, where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. We're going to cover all of that, but here, our goal is to develop clarity, because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind. He's thriving through your guidance. We know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Today we're going to talk about listening, how to get your babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, or all children, how to listen better. So one of the first questions any speech therapist, worth her salt, will ask a parent, no matter what your concern is, would be How well does your child understand spoken language? And, quite often, parents will say, Oh, he understands everything. And then when you probe a little bit, you'll say, maybe most of the time, or sometimes, and then you might even draw the conclusion, well, maybe, I don't know, I'm, uh, maybe he's just stubborn, or maybe she's shy. Here's the thing. We cannot assume anything when it comes to your baby. You're a toddler We need to understand what we're dealing with and why. And I'm talking a lot about the why's here, right? We need to peel back the layers and we can't just slap a label on it. Oh, he's a late talker. Oh, she's shy. Oh, he'll talk when he wants to, which is what a lot of professionals, pediatricians, other speech therapists, teachers, educators. They might just. want to give him or her more time. And I say, no, we can't wait. We can't afford it. We need to understand what's going on. And if everything is hunky dory, then great, you know, for sure. And you can go on about your business and you can help your little one each and every day with confidence. So that's our target. in today's episode, we're going to look at Understanding or what we call receptive language. But first, let's talk about how speaking and understanding are really the two sides of the same coin. They're very different skills, and yet they're deeply interconnected with our brains. And they rely on each other as we develop speech and language from birth. Or truth is, From utero, in utero. So as a speech language therapist, and that's why we call ourselves Speech language therapists, right? Or pathologists. And a pathologist in my industry just means that we diagnose and then we treat. Unfortunately, I think a lot of school based people will call themselves just a speech therapist because they aren't really into the whole diagnosing. They look at Where the problem is maybe he's not talking. He's having tantrums. He doesn't listen or any of those, symptoms and then they just jump right in and try to navigate around the symptoms and help manage his behavior until Perhaps development will then kick in. I'm not quite sure but my Responsibility for 35 years was really to analyze and assess and figure out diagnostically what's going on and how can we serve him best. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about receptive language and we're going to break it down in order that then we understand how to build it through everyday life experiences. So the ability to understand what is being said, or in other words, what the brain does with what it hears. And if we think about how you and I perhaps Study the foreign language, right? We had to listen to how the sounds were strung together in those words in order to code And then ENCODE, so coding means to break it down and understand the meaning, and ENDCODING means to pull it together or speak it, right? And so, as I think all of us, one time or another, understand that we can hear words spoken, but we don't always necessarily understand, or that we're not really listening to the meaning behind it. All parents, all grownups, as well as babies and toddlers and Children will sometimes, hear us but not be listening and therefore not understanding. And you know, the joke is that husbands are often accused of hearing you, but not really listening and understanding and therefore remembering, right? They didn't remember to take out the trash or to put their laundry in the, the basket. My husband is pretty notorious because he has fabulous hearing skills and auditory memory skills. And so he can regurgitate anything I say. Now, is he really digesting it and contemplating it? Can he, you know, pull up a chair and have a discussion with me? That's listening, that's understanding, that's human communication, and that's a different skill set or a different, experience, right? So for today, all of this material or this, these ideas can really be implemented or thought about for the late talker or someone who you think might be slow to talking, right? And I do want to have a little caveat here that that term late talker Can often be overgeneralized, especially in 2024 and I have, three episodes in the past from number 29 in December 22. It was published on December 22nd, 2022 episodes 30 and 31 in consecutive weeks. talk about do you have a late talker? and then I present four real life late talker cases to you and how I tease it all apart and the questions that I ask. And then the third one is how to interpret your toddler's behavior. Because if they're not talking and if they're not using language yet to, to engage, then what's his behavior telling us, right? And that's what I'm always looking at. So. I understand how this overgeneralization can happen, but in order to really support any child, but your child in particular, and to understand how the development is unfolding, and then be able to create everyday experiences so then they can have success, it's important that we Digest all of this background information again. I'm not expecting, you know, parents to take copious notes and, and feel like you're going to get tested on it. But if I can give you this 35, 000 foot perspective, then you can bring that understanding into your everyday life. And, and what I have found is that I really think it helps mom and dads show up better and that you understand that little snippet of engagement when you're wash, washing his hands or changing him or introducing the new food and you pull up the chair and you show him how to chew and you help him, you know, put his toys away in a fun, lighthearted manner. All of those things are critical. Experiences that are literally wiring his brain. So everyday activities are where your babies and your toddlers learn best. All right, so let me first give you these three groups of A late talker. And, and as I said in those previous episodes back in December of 2022, you can, and I will of course talk about them again, but today these are just quick snippets. The first type of late talker would, what I would call a pure late talker. He or she does understand everything. Everything that's going on and even without many words that they're able to express, they're able to follow directions. They can point to body parts and pictures on request. They can demonstrate what they are understanding right through their actions by pointing or literally getting up and doing whatever you ask. Through gestures or minds. They're very sophisticated communicators, even though they're not. Speaking the numbers of words that we're hoping, but that's a pure quote unquote, late talker. The second type would kind of fall into this medium or mid range late talker. Sometimes they seem to understand, but it's not consistent from day to day. And, This happens with kids usually when there is a physical complication and it's what we speech pathologists will look at as intermittent hearing loss due to recurrent or freaky or frequently middle ear infections. Also colds and just chronic congestion can really get to you. occlude those, those ears, right? And so it's sort of like, if we get water in our ear, you and me, when we wash our hair or go swimming or, you know, get tousled into the ocean and, and you can't get that fluid out of the middle ear, it's stuck. Because what, when that happens with babies and toddlers and preschoolers, then it's distorting. The speech sounds and it's very, very hard for them to code it or interpret it. And so it's, it's kind of muffled. And what I often show parents is when I gently put a hand over my own mouth and start to talk is muffled. If you really focus in, you might be able to understand. So here, let me, give you this example. Today is a very good day. That's very different than today is a very good day. Today is a very good day. It's muffled and that's what happens when we have fluid in our middle ear and It slows it down, right? And so the sound that's traveling through your ear is being manipulated because there's fluid and thick gunk in there. And your child therefore needs more time, needs cues or prompts. And it's intermittent. It might be three, Thick in the morning when he first wakes up and then it kind of clears up a little bit, but then he takes a nap and it gets worse again or he drinks milk and it gets worse again. There's lots of environmental factors that feed into this. The other reason why kids can have this kind of, um, disengagement and lack of listening is perhaps they have poor sleep that causes poor focus. And then they're less ready to learn each and every day. And that poor sleep could be because there is congestion. He turns out to be a mouth breather and then he has intermittent waking up during the night. Also, Children could just be easily overloaded. This is part of their sensory system. There is not fully developed. And, some kids, all of this is as human beings, it is on a continuum, but some kids are more sensitive. and so, If there's a big active environment, whether it's at home or on the playground or if he goes to a daycare center, um, he's not going to tune into that because there's too much auditory and visual stimuli going in and he can't handle it. He can't. there's actually a filter system, And so then you start asking yourself questions. Perhaps he does do better in quieter environments. Or maybe, like I said, he's better in the beginning of the day. And less able to engage and follow through and listen. and compliant, right? Um, at the end of the day. And yes, a lot of this is, is typical and to be expected, but you want to step back and start collecting data. And that's what I'm always encouraging you guys to do. The third type of quote, unquote, late talker would be where they present both. listening or understanding issues, and they're delayed in talking. So that's both. And to me, that's much, much more than quote unquote, a late talker. A late talker is that first one, or it could even be that second one that there's something going on inside of his body and inside of his environment. That's not letting him wire the speech and language sounds and coding his language. But when you have both. speaking and listening or understanding what we would call receptive and expressive delays that requires deeper investigation of a very thorough assessment and most likely would benefit from direct therapy as well as parent coaching. So, so we need to separate that out and it's very important that you, your pediatrician, any, primary caretakers that you have understand because otherwise, where do you start to help him? Right? What do you focus on? If they have, if your child has, You know, challenges with understanding spoken language than trying to get him to speak is premature. and that's what we're going to talk about in this episode and the next one. So if you want to just take one phrase home with you, it's a child must understand the words before he can use those words. in real time. And that's not me saying this. That is years and years of research. And you can look at Dr. Rosetti's and Nancy Seigert's and James McDonald. And the colleague of mine, Laura Mize, who I, I cited before in the Hannon Center, all of these people who have been, researching and, like I always say here on the floor, doing it each and every day. We understand. That if you try to force or get ahead of receptive language, it's going to be a disservice to him. we're going to start, this whole picture of receptive language by contrasting the typical expectations we see from a 12 month old to his 24th month, right? That first birthday to the second birthday. And we're going to contrast that with. your child from 24 months to 36 months. There's a really remarkable difference between that one, one and a half and brand new two year old. When we compare that to that brand new two year old to two and a half to brand new three year old. And it's a big age range and I'm doing this on purpose just so you can have this huge, uh, contrast to compare these two age groups, right, Unfortunately, I see a lot of well intended people, both on the internet and then in real practice. And it could be moms, who are on social media sharing their, beautiful experience of, new mom, right? You could have your first or your second, or there are people that I'm sure you have seen on the internet that have six or eight, children. Um, but I also see therapists too, that seem to lump this understanding On a two year old, a brand new two year old. And I feel like it's just not fair, right? That there's a lot of developmentally nuanced pieces that need to be understood. So you have realistic and healthy expectations for that two year old. Um, and it's very age appropriate for a brand new two year old to still be working on those listening skills. I also see a lot and so I, you know, I'm throwing caution out here that following directions or playing and getting along with siblings. So you have an 18 month or a 2 year old and then you have a 3 year old or a 4 year old and parents are unrealistically expecting them to all get along. And I think that that can be a dangerous. perspective. And so I'm just throwing that out here. So I think it's really important if we contrast these two age groups, that one to two year old and that two to three year old, then you have a better understanding. Expecting your 18 or 20 month old to hold himself up against a sophisticated, cognitively advanced, Three year old, I think can be harmful and can be frustrating for everybody involved. So that's what kind of prompted this idea. always keep in mind to be mindful of the age. What are you asking them? Right? our language organization and the way that we formulate questions also matter. And then look at the whole context. So let's first define receptive language. And in my field, a more clinical term would be auditory processing, right? Auditory is to listen. And then processing is really that Ability to integrate the information and understand right in real time and spoken language. There's a timing mechanism and and I've talked a lot about here how the brain is this big biological clock, right? And and things have to work and synchronize up in order to. Understand human communication, human behavior, right? And it's not just what they hear through their ears. It's what they see and what they feel and how they, can process this whole three dimensional world in nanoseconds, right? But the whole auditory processing system really looks at What's the integrity of this higher auditory system, right? And, and in my field, you can really even pull that apart. And we can talk about central auditory processing and then just auditory processing. And this all seems to fall under this umbrella of what we call language processing. So we can see how these terms get interchangeable, overgeneralized, overused. And, and I just want. to kind of give you, like I said, this 35 ft view and then you can use that kind of basic understanding to go and, and work with your child. and at the same time, I want you to be able to have this background information so you realize that everything you do when you play and when you sing and when you engage and when you tuck them in and when, they fall down and when you give them a bath, all of these things are wiring to your child. They're making neural connections literally in real time. So, again, to go back to some of these terms, we're talking about how well does your son or daughter listen? How well do they understand? What is their auditory perception? And what's their receptive language? And all of those kinds of, integration has to do with hearing. Right. So hearing means that we have these two ears, right? And we're going to talk about how the parts of those ears work together. and your right ear, especially as a child, as a baby and a toddler and all the way up to the 11th birthday, give or take, that right ear and that left ear, Actually hear and process different elements of speech and language in human communication, but that's for a different episode. the term hearing just means that they perceived, that they actually heard a sound. like you're a newborn. is wired to hear the human voice. That's the most easily thing to understand because they've, they've had some pre wiring, some soft wiring in utero as they grow and develop. And so they're going to hone in literally To mama's voice, or the first female voice, or daddy's voice. They're, they need that because they're desperate to survive, right? But a pure tone audiogram means like, oh, I went and got my hearing tested. Those are just sounds and that's designed to identify if there's a hearing loss to the sensitivity of of hearing sounds, right? and you can have a, a hearing loss sensitivity in one ear or both ears, or the ears can be different too, but that's a pure tone, what we call audiogram. and we learned about, I don't know, 70 plus years ago that I think it was in the 1950s that processing both environmental sounds and the spoken language of humans is a contralateral system. We used to think that it was ipsilateral, but, we can say like it's mostly contralateral. Contralateral means that what goes in your right ear crosses the midline of your two hemisphere, the corpus callosum, and is actually coded. interpreted, processed in the left hemisphere. So it literally crosses your two hemispheres, right? and let me explain this a little bit. more realistically. perhaps you've known someone who had a stroke or a head head injury, if you have damage on one in one hemisphere, it can affect the opposite side of your body. And so that's true for hearing processing to hearing it, both hearing acuity and then hearing interpretation. and this is important because when we work with young children That we recognize both the right and the left ears are doing different things with all of the information that they're taking in. And so say your son or daughter has a recurrent ear infection in her right ear. So that could impact speech and language a lot more if they had a chronic recurrent ear infection in their left ear. Because in those early years the physical elements of spoken speech, the sounds, the word patterns, the sentence structure with the vast majority, it's a five to one ratio will go in the right ear and then be coded in the left hemisphere. so again, I'm giving you this background information because I think it's important. It's worthy of us to look at how all these parts fit together. one of the, medical diagnoses of a recurrent ear infection you have three or four within a six month period. And some of the kids that I've seen have, haven't even had a couple of weeks of clearness, right? They just have one cold after another, after another. So we also know that when a child has diagnosed with a middle ear infection, they had fluid in the middle ear canal. For weeks before it became infected and then even if you clear up the infection through antibiotics And that's a whole nother story but then you're going to have that fluid doesn't clear for a long long time and one of one of the primary reasons why children babies and toddlers and preschoolers are are more vulnerable is because their head structure isn't fully developed. And well, let me first kind of talk about how there are three parts to the ear system, right? So you have the OUTER part of the ear and that's where we collect sound waves, right? And so that's what we see on the side of our head, right? That, that's It's called the pinna, right? P I N N A. And then we have, the external auditory canal. That's, when you aren't supposed to put your Q tips in your ear to dry them out, to clean them out, don't stick them inside that canal. Right. And then About one third the way in, it turns into the MIDDLE ear and that's where the eardrum is. So if you've ever looked in your child's ear, through an otoscope, then you could see the eardrum, whether it was inflamed or red or healthy, right? but that middle ear is where the sound is then converted. To mechanical energy, right? and that includes, as I said, your eardrum. But then we have these three teeny tiny little. Bone structures called the malleus, the incus, and the stapes and that's how sound is then converted into mechanical Energy, and then you have the middle ear cavity and those infamous eustachian tubes So all of that is in the middle ear. That's why we call it a middle ear infection. If there's gunk or fluid in there Especially those eustachian tubes in the problem That I started to say was that babies, toddlers and preschoolers, if their head are still kind of small or the Eustachian tubes haven't, dipped, meaning that they're teeny tiny little tubes that drain the fluid out of the middle ear, but most babies, because they're so small at birth, They're those eustachian tubes are parallel to the ground We need them to tip down a little bit. So then that fluid can drain out naturally, right? It's just like any other Draining pipe that you have in your house, right? You're plumbing or your your rain gutters or all of that but they need https: otter. ai solid foods that they're sitting up, right? And that's a whole nother conversation. But especially bottle fed babies and breastfed babies, but more bottle fed babies, just because we're more prone to lie them parallel to the ground. So then the INNER ear is really where it contains the cochlea. And that's where, um, the sound is then interpreted and, and translated, but those three parts are really, really important. And that's why we need to keep our kids as healthy and as clear as possible, right? But the traditional hearing test, what I mentioned before, the audiograms, and then as well as tympanograms. And the tympanogram is. If your child's ever presented as a, as having, an ear infection or, congestion, then most pediatricians offices will have a tympanogram. And unfortunately, they don't always do it correctly, but, um, that's just kind of been my history. But that is where they, they can measure the, um, if there's fluid behind that eardrum and it's just like a little puff of air that they it sort of looks like an earbud right and they Put in to see if there's movement with, uh, with the eardrum, right? Because that's supposed to vibrate, right? It's supposed to have a wiggle room. But if there's fluid in the middle ear and it's pushing against the ear, drum itself. That's where, when you can look inside and you can see if the eardrum is swollen or red or infected, and sometimes it can even burst, right? I've seen many, many, many patients over the years that the eardrum bursts because the fluid built up so much. It's like a balloon, right? It can easily repair itself, but if you have too many of them, then you can get scar tissue built up. and maybe some of you have heard of getting, PE tubes, pressure equalization tubes put in if you have these recurrent ear problems. And, you know, the first half of my professional life, I used to be a big supporter of those, PE tubes. they're fairly easy to, put in and the joke was, Oh, a mother could, take five minutes and clean out her handbag and your son or daughter will be will be done with the surgical procedure. But now I'm more of the thought, well, let's look at why they're getting recurrent ear infections. You know, look at the diet, look at the sleeping patterns, look at allergies, look at, And I've mentioned this before that if we just remove cow's milk, a lot of this congestion can go away. back in the late 1990s, I, I know it was in effect, um, early 2000 because my daughter was, born in 2000 and the vast majority of states and major hospitals across the U S started to implement audiograms at birth, right before you leave the hospital. And that really has helped identify kids who had a true hearing loss at birth, right? That is not secondary to ear infections or, bursted eardrums or, or any of that. But what the numbers look at is we were able to catch about two out of a thousand kids. That's about 6, 200 children who were born with permanent hearing loss, right? Something went awry, whether it was, bilateral or unilateral one ear or both ears. I'm hoping that all of you received that to kind of rule that out. But when we look at receptive understanding, right, auditory processing, then we have to ask ourselves, what happens to that signal once it's, it's taken in by the outer ear is turned into mechanical energy by the, in the middle ear. And then what happens when it travels along the auditory nerve through the brainstem and then eventually reaches the brain. That's what we call auditory processing. What happens to this signal along that pathway? And what I often explain is what does the brain do with that data, right? And that's what we're coding when we're talking to our baby, when we're engaging and singing songs and playing nursery rhymes and all of that. That that data is being coded and interpreted. Way, way, what we call higher order language processing, So keep in mind, and I've shared this before and I've shared this with probably every family I've ever worked with, hundreds and hundreds over the years, that when babies are born, all babies. Are considered citizens of the world because they're wired to learn spoken language, right? Unless they unfortunately have that, that permanent hearing loss that they're born with, right? That, those 6200 little ones that we are now able to catch at birth, but they're ready, willing and able to start to take in auditory information. And hone that skill, right? Identify their primary or native language. And yes, babies are well, well equipped to learn two or more languages simultaneously. And, being bilingual or having two or three languages in the home does not cause any speech delay or language processing problem. That is a myth. But at the same time, it's important that when you have a two year old or a three year old who's slow to talk or seems to be having receptive language issues or expressive language issues, you can't just say, Oh, it's because they speak two languages at home. No. Because there are millions of people throughout the world that were raised in multilingual homes and are doing just fine. Right? And so, in my practice in Southern California, I ran across this quite a bit. There are multiple languages there, and there in the Pasadena area, there was a lot of, Chinese communities. And one of the big questions that I would ask, How is their Spanish or their Chinese or their Mandarin? And it wasn't until that point that the parents then started to say, huh, well that's not very good either. Right? Or, and I know we're not supposed to do this, but if they have an older sibling, we would compare because I want mom and dad to understand what's really going on here. Right? It's not because you speak two languages at home. Okay. Because as I said, there are millions and millions of people. I wish I was bilingual, but you know, I'm not, I'm not wired that way and I wasn't raised that way. if you do have an older child and they speak Chinese or Spanish and English and they're, you know, in first grade or second grade or whatever, and they're doing just fine, then we need to compare that. So now, since we're taking this 35, 000 foot view, and I will definitely have a PDF of this so you all can have just a printout, one of those little checklists, a cheat sheet, because again, it's important that parents Understand all that your child is doing in that first year and second year and third year. but what's happening through auditory processing in order for them to develop competently as a speech language and human communicator, right? And remember what I said way back in the beginning, and I say this often over and over again in all of these episodes, that Your child has to understand the words that you and I want him to be able to express. They have to understand that first. Okay, so here are some aspects of auditory processing. Now that you know what auditory processing is, or at least you have a better perspective of it, right? And those three. Okay. Parts of the, the ear system, the physical thing that it's not just the ear that's sitting on the outside of your head, right? But Think of the word process as a prescribed procedure of something, right? You can have process at your work, right? You have process in a restaurant, you have processes, if you're a bank teller and, for the auditory processing, it is a prescribed procedure, right? So we have first auditory attention, right? You have to be able to tune in to the auditory input the sound right where the voice right you can hear the the car honk and so you can tune into that or you can hear your mom say hello from across the room and you can tune into those two different perceptions but you're just having auditory attention to be able to tune in. Then you have auditory discrimination. The ability to distinguish the difference. So that was a car horn versus my mom's voice. Those now I'm going to discriminate those two. Then you have auditory sequential processing. many pieces of information can you receive, store, and then hold? Recall it or utilize it, right? So auditory sequential processing. That's why your baby can hold on to one word at a time. And then by their second birthday, they're starting to understand and process two or three words, right? and it's in a sequential pattern, and typically that's related to that auditory sequential pattern related to auditory memory, right? And oftentimes in our testing, we'll, do that. as it relates to numbers, right? A digit span recall, you know, repeat these numbers after me or repeat these words after me, but that's auditory sequential processing, but it's also necessary to understand the parts of a word. Like if I say cup cake, right? Cupcake. Those are two parts, which came first. It's not cake cup. Right. And so that's, again, part of that sequential processing, but that's what the brain is doing. Taking in those auditory data, Turning it into mechanical energy and then translating it up in the brain, right? Then there's auditory tonal processing. Um, and so we have to correctly process the sounds and the tones and it's related somewhat to what we look at as auditory discrimination, right? What I mentioned in the previous item, it then takes it to a step further and has significant impact on the overall process. Now, remember I said a little while ago that for those first 10 or 11 or 12 years, the right ear is predominantly taking in the sounds and the words. Think of it as the physical structure of speech, right? the right ear is predominant the features of, the spoken words, right? The sounds within the words, the words within the sentences, and you code a lot of it on the left hemisphere. And then the left ear is taking in more of this tonal processing, right? The nonverbal elements, the pitch and the tones and the, frequency waves. And together, you're mapping what. English sounds like, or French or German. And then there's the next aspect of auditory processing would be auditory memory. And it's the ability to store and recall auditory information. And you can see how that builds up. And that's why it's important when we look at developmental milestones that your baby at Two, if we're now expecting them to understand and use two and three word phrases, then they have to have a big pool, right? At least 50 words is what I've always said, right? What we say and then different types of words, nouns and verbs and adjectives. but all of that has to be stored and recalled in this auditory component of the brain, auditory memory. And then there's also auditory sensitivity and that's perception of sound loudness, Again, if your child has recurrent ear infections or chronic, and congestions and colds and runny noses and there's just fluid and gunk, it might not be infected. That's good, but it's not clear, right? And so it's that sensitivity is dampened and and so when it is clear Then they might be hypersensitive, but when it's occluded with this gunk or fluid Then then they're hyposensitive, right? It's under sensitive And that's why we need to keep your little one as healthy and as clear as possible. So even if we have a child present with normal, quote unquote, hearing, right, so that we've done the audiogram so they can hear the sounds, but they're not necessarily interpreting them or storing them and understanding them. Let me just kind of go back because I think it's important, especially nowadays, because again, social media shares a lot of information out there and there's a lot of noise, no pun intended, but it's important to understand hypo sensitive. individuals where they have reduced response to the sound environment. And then the hyper sensitive individuals where they over respond to what you and I, or what the average person might consider normal. But there's going to be a range. Like I don't really like, big, loud concerts or big, loud parties. shopping areas. It's not so much that the noise bothers me, but it's the whole busyness bothers me, right? And that's just a personal preference of how I feel. I like, you know, to me, less is more. But I'm sure you've heard of kids or maybe, you have one or you are one. You're a human being that, you know. Loud noises bother you and, and so we have to take that into consideration when we're looking at auditory processing development. Is there a reason why, loud noise bothers them or is it hypo and they just aren't picking up that everything is kind of dampened. and it could be because this next. Next aspect of auditory processing system is called auditory figure ground processing. And what that is, is the ability to attend to and then process that auditory information, that stimuli in the presence of background noise. And you can see how all of these features fit together. But when I look at an older child, when I had my practice who was six or seven and I would. for these, you know, each one of these elements or aspects and auditory figure ground was a big piece of that puzzle because when you're talking about a first or a second grader or a third grader or even a sixth grader and they're in a noisy classroom environment, schools are noisy and they're just not getting it right. They're not able to pull the teacher's voice out to separate that background noise from what's important. They're supposed to be listening to the lecture or listening to the story or following directions, but in their processing system, all of it is equally weighted and they don't have that good figure ground figure ground processing ability, right? The background is just, is overriding, And, and there are things that we can do at all of these levels to improve this. the human body is quite remarkable. And as I've shared with you in the past, I am not a big believer of just slapping a label on something and say, Oh, you know, he's hypersensitive to, noise or she's, not a, she's a slow processor. She can't, get better. All of us can get better. And then the last element, or I'm sorry, there's two more, but language processing is then looked at as processing the meaning of all of this noise that they're taking in, right? just to separate these two things out, language processing is referring to the meaning of what is spoken, right? So that's not true when someone states auditory processing, because that's what I just talked about all those other different steps. think of language processing as the next step after the auditory processing occurs, right? So you can look at, Are they attending? Are they able to discriminate? Do they know the sequential order of what is being said? Are they taking in the tonal processes? Do they have good auditory memory? Good sensitivity? They don't, overreact or underreact to the noise in the environment? Are they able to have good figure ground processing? Can they hear someone's voice over all of this noise, whether it's in a classroom or at a party or in a restaurant? And then language processing is the meaning to those words, right? It's really understanding, Stop, sit down, one more bite, get your coat, the meaning behind it, right? And then the final aspect of this whole package is called temporal processing. And that's related to the time aspect of processing. The auditory signal, the rate of processing, and, and I've shared with you before that, speech is a timing machine. The brain is a timing machine. Coding has to do with timing, right? And that we're learning the rhythm of this dance, this back and forth. But there, there's something that we can measure looking at the temporal processing. Okay. the rate at which your child can take in auditory information, code it, interpret it and then respond to it. So the purpose here is not to overwhelm you or make you feel like you have to study all of these auditory cortex parts, right? Um, I'm not going to give you a test or any of that, but it's simply to, to give you that perspective Of how much your baby and your toddler are doing each and every day. Every time you engage, every time you play, every time you're singing that song and you wanting them to join in with you. Think of all the work that's going on inside their ear, right? Those three sections of the ear and then up into the brain. And so I want you to keep in mind what it takes to develop over time, good listening skills, great understanding, and to be able to, to express themselves once they've built this, this auditory system, right? And yes, In the beginning with cooing and babbling, we're going to have this give and take, but they're just beginning to learn how we can take turns and communicate and share and imitate and build upon that. but that first year, especially we're having to code all of these and exercise these systems. So then around that first birthday, they're putting meaning. to those words other than mama or dada, right? Those two word patterns are universal. They're just really easy for them to say, to come out of their mouth. But once they've attached meaning to that and they realize, Oh, when I say mama, she comes running, then that is true empowerment and that's on purpose. So then that's a real word. But you can also understand that That's why it's really important to keep her or his immune system strong. Right? Chronic congestions, frequent ear infections, colds, allergies, all of those things easily interfere with learning to read. The auditory system, right? But the overall learning and developing and engaging and sleeping and being able to eat, right? If we have a really stuffy nose it's going to be really hard for your 10 month old to sit there and chew food because they can't breathe while they're chewing, right? We want them to learn how to close their lips and to chew their food but they can't get the air through their nose because they're stuffy. So then eating is going to be difficult and challenging. So it becomes the snowball effect. It's also important, as you can see why I reiterate how screen time is not beneficial for early speech and language development. it's a poor acoustic representation, right? Your human voice is a thousand times better. It's not three dimensional, right? It's a two dimensional visual screen, so it's hard to take in that visual information and that auditory information and connect it to up in the neural pathways. It doesn't have really good sound location. I just walked you through all of the different aspects of auditory processing, right? It doesn't look at sound location or directionality or depth or quality, right? If your child is on the floor playing and daddy walks in and says, Hey Joey, how are you? He can orient in this little world of his. even if he's not a crawler or a walker, but he can turn toward dad's voice. It was on the, Oh, that's on the right side of me. I recognize that human voice. That's someone I love. Right? And the screens also compete because of the visual overload. So you're Your baby and your toddler, and we all do this, right? We zone out, right? It's either an overload visually and or auditorily. And it gets either too excited, and that's usually what happens in that frontal lobe there, or they're just zoning out and they, you know, become dampened by it. Remember that your baby and your toddler are still under significant construction. Right? They're born immature. They're born ready to, follow your lead, but they need you to help them finish. And it takes years upon years. I know that you know this, but Perhaps by me sharing all of the intricate things that are going on every time you're engaging with your baby, you know, whether it's a one year old or two year old or three year old, but playing, engaging, singing, sharing, exploring in real time is building that network that you're striving for. So for this episode, I really, wanted to give you that. 35, 000 foot. And then we will continue this conversation and really look more closely at the receptive language targets of that one to two year old. And then that two to three year old, I do have links down below with all of these outlines. So you can take a sneak peek at it. And then, in the next episode I will cover them in more detail. more closely. But I think it's important to have this background knowledge first. So I hope this gets you excited to really learn more and to Be present every day, no matter you're taking a bath or you're teaching them how to chew or you're building blocks or you're, teaching them how to, you know, put on their pants. There's a lot of different things that are happening in real time that are helping them a thousand different ways. So let me know if you have any questions. Reach out an email or DM. Get the links down below. Sign up for my email list. And if you have a free moment and you're really grateful for getting all of this benefit, then don't forget to leave me a review. Okay, take care. God bless. See you next time.