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A review by lpm100
The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late by Thomas Sowell
5.0
Book Review
Late Talking Children
Thomas Sowell
5/5 stars
"You can't make an expert understand something when his income depends on not understanding it."
*******
We purchased this book because the youngest of our children (18 months old) seems to be slow to speak, and his physician suggested that we contact a specialist.
We wanted to get some good ideas from a good thinker who has ACTUAL EXPERIENCE dealing with late talking children (i.e., Thomas Sowell, whose son was a late talker) about how to address the problem.
It has been my experience that: Even for diagnoses that have concrete and quantified markers, such as Behçet's syndrome (which I myself have), it can take a *very* long time to get a diagnosis--and *especially* if the diagnosis is exclusionary.
*******
The human brain is a thing that is only extremely poorly understood, and most people who diagnose in fields that deal with the black box of the human brain have very little to go off of.
As such, "turf and ego considerations" (p.113) could get you a misdiagnosis--with all the wasted time and needless therapeutic frustrations that that entails-- and oftentimes "unreliable diagnoses are usually no farther away than your local school district." (ibid)
Also, once you get a wrong diagnosis about something (say ADHD as opposed to hypomania), it becomes a lot more difficult to get off of that track.
It is mentioned only in passing in this book (p.135), but: autism is the classic example of a severely overdiagnosed disease. At most, 1 out of 1000 children are autistic. But, it seems like every idiot who draws breath is ready to diagnose someone else / someone else's child as autistic. (The current CDC rate is 1 out of 44. Or, a 23-fold increase. And don't even get me started about the three order of magnitude increase in diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder.)
Keeping with the example of autism: It's also an example of a disease with fluctuant diagnostic criteria. (Asperger's was the disease of the hour that everyone was diagnosing everyone else with until all of a sudden it dropped out of the DSM in between editions.)
So, what do we learn from this book?
1. Late talking children are a lot more common than one would think.
2. Most of the time (75%, p.146), it resolves itself-- given enough time. And there is nothing that can be done to push children to speak any sooner than they are ready.
3. Sometimes a differential diagnosis has to be made for many other possible ailments that are treated by many different INDEPENDENT specialists (Autism. Hearing impairment. Etc), and it must be understood that not all children perform on cue for evaluators/therapists.
Unwillingness ≠ inability.
4. Diagnosis and treatment are two separate things, and speech therapists are fine as long as they are not trying to diagnose autism and staying about the business of speech therapy.
It must be understood that most people that we would encounter in the course of public education (such as school social workers) have degrees on the level of Associates/Bachelors, and people who work in Education tend to not be the sharpest pencils in the box. (EXTRA FUN FACT: Those who can't do, teach. (p.136, 189). It has been known for several decades that the least competent students in most disciplines become teachers. This author cites references all the way from the 1950s through the aughts.)
5. Not all children who are late talkers are bright, but there are a number of evident characteristics of bright late talkers (p.112):
a. Outstanding / precocious analytical or musical abilities.
b. Outstanding memories.
c. Strong wills.
d. Highly selective interests.
e. Delayed toilet training.
f. Precocious ability at reading/numbers/computers.
g. Disproportionate numbers of close relatives in occupations requiring analytical / mathematical/musical abilities.
h. Unusual concentration at their selected tasks.
6. The brain *really is* a black box, and there are different hypotheses about differential brain development that can explain a lot of late talking, as well as other diseases were development is very uneven. (The author makes some very apt comparisons to Williams syndrome.)
7. "Understanding and not speaking" is worlds apart from "neither speaking nor understanding." And the former turn out far better than the latter (p.146).
8. If you have a child in public school, you must be extremely judicious about evaluations that are done there. For the reason that: people who work there tend to be the bottom of the barrel in any intellectual sense of the word. The author does not directly say, but I would recommend ducking public schools all together if you can afford it.
Verdict: Recommended. This book has been a great time saver.
Our son understands things that are said to him, and he is able to follow instructions. We will leave this topic alone for another two or three years and pick it up only if he does not start proper speech by around 4. (p.146)
Late Talking Children
Thomas Sowell
5/5 stars
"You can't make an expert understand something when his income depends on not understanding it."
*******
We purchased this book because the youngest of our children (18 months old) seems to be slow to speak, and his physician suggested that we contact a specialist.
We wanted to get some good ideas from a good thinker who has ACTUAL EXPERIENCE dealing with late talking children (i.e., Thomas Sowell, whose son was a late talker) about how to address the problem.
It has been my experience that: Even for diagnoses that have concrete and quantified markers, such as Behçet's syndrome (which I myself have), it can take a *very* long time to get a diagnosis--and *especially* if the diagnosis is exclusionary.
*******
The human brain is a thing that is only extremely poorly understood, and most people who diagnose in fields that deal with the black box of the human brain have very little to go off of.
As such, "turf and ego considerations" (p.113) could get you a misdiagnosis--with all the wasted time and needless therapeutic frustrations that that entails-- and oftentimes "unreliable diagnoses are usually no farther away than your local school district." (ibid)
Also, once you get a wrong diagnosis about something (say ADHD as opposed to hypomania), it becomes a lot more difficult to get off of that track.
It is mentioned only in passing in this book (p.135), but: autism is the classic example of a severely overdiagnosed disease. At most, 1 out of 1000 children are autistic. But, it seems like every idiot who draws breath is ready to diagnose someone else / someone else's child as autistic. (The current CDC rate is 1 out of 44. Or, a 23-fold increase. And don't even get me started about the three order of magnitude increase in diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder.)
Keeping with the example of autism: It's also an example of a disease with fluctuant diagnostic criteria. (Asperger's was the disease of the hour that everyone was diagnosing everyone else with until all of a sudden it dropped out of the DSM in between editions.)
So, what do we learn from this book?
1. Late talking children are a lot more common than one would think.
2. Most of the time (75%, p.146), it resolves itself-- given enough time. And there is nothing that can be done to push children to speak any sooner than they are ready.
3. Sometimes a differential diagnosis has to be made for many other possible ailments that are treated by many different INDEPENDENT specialists (Autism. Hearing impairment. Etc), and it must be understood that not all children perform on cue for evaluators/therapists.
Unwillingness ≠ inability.
4. Diagnosis and treatment are two separate things, and speech therapists are fine as long as they are not trying to diagnose autism and staying about the business of speech therapy.
It must be understood that most people that we would encounter in the course of public education (such as school social workers) have degrees on the level of Associates/Bachelors, and people who work in Education tend to not be the sharpest pencils in the box. (EXTRA FUN FACT: Those who can't do, teach. (p.136, 189). It has been known for several decades that the least competent students in most disciplines become teachers. This author cites references all the way from the 1950s through the aughts.)
5. Not all children who are late talkers are bright, but there are a number of evident characteristics of bright late talkers (p.112):
a. Outstanding / precocious analytical or musical abilities.
b. Outstanding memories.
c. Strong wills.
d. Highly selective interests.
e. Delayed toilet training.
f. Precocious ability at reading/numbers/computers.
g. Disproportionate numbers of close relatives in occupations requiring analytical / mathematical/musical abilities.
h. Unusual concentration at their selected tasks.
6. The brain *really is* a black box, and there are different hypotheses about differential brain development that can explain a lot of late talking, as well as other diseases were development is very uneven. (The author makes some very apt comparisons to Williams syndrome.)
7. "Understanding and not speaking" is worlds apart from "neither speaking nor understanding." And the former turn out far better than the latter (p.146).
8. If you have a child in public school, you must be extremely judicious about evaluations that are done there. For the reason that: people who work there tend to be the bottom of the barrel in any intellectual sense of the word. The author does not directly say, but I would recommend ducking public schools all together if you can afford it.
Verdict: Recommended. This book has been a great time saver.
Our son understands things that are said to him, and he is able to follow instructions. We will leave this topic alone for another two or three years and pick it up only if he does not start proper speech by around 4. (p.146)