Infant sucking habits may affect how baby talks

4 November 2009

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Pacifier, baby bottle or finger sucking may hamper a child's speech development if the habit goes on too long.

In a study that took place in Patagonia, Chile, researchers associated the persistence of these sucking habits with an increased risk of speech disorders in preschool children. The children were more likely to have difficulty producing certain word sounds and to simplify their pronunciation.

The results were published in BMC Pediatrics, an online, open-access medical journal.

A team led by Clarita Barbosa from Corporación de Rehabilitación Club de Leones Cruz del Sur conducted the study, along with collaborators from the University of Washington Multidisciplinary International Research Training Program in the School of Public Health, the Department of Epidemiology, and the Department of Global Health.

Looking at a group of 128 children age 3 years to 5 years, the researchers gathered parents' reports of each child's feeding and sucking behaviours during infancy and evaluated the child's speech. The researchers found that delaying giving a baby bottle until the child was at least 9 months old reduced the risk of later developing speech disorders, while children who sucked their fingers or who used a pacifier for more than 3 years were three times more likely to develop speech impediments.

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