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For many parents, a dummy is a wonderful thing. It can pacify a child with ease, and the benefits don’t stop there. But with the benefits come a range of disadvantages, particularly in the risk that dummies pose to a child’s speech development. As a result of my research, we have introduced a dummy policy at All Saints Preschool Harrow Weald, north-west London to inform families about the pros and cons of pacifiers and to encourage parents to limit their use.
Much like a bottle, which can have a similarly detrimental impact on speech development, dummies are often used by parents to comfort young babies, either at night to settle, or during the day to make their baby feel relaxed.
The decision to give a child a dummy must, of course, lie with the parents, but early years practitioners have an important role to play in providing parents with the relevant information, guidance and support.
Despite the advice available from, for example, health visitors and Children’s Centres, Talking Point – the resource website run by communication charity ICAN – found that some guidance is conflicting, while some parents struggle to access the information due to various barriers, such as their levels of education or being speakers of English as an additional language.
THE ADVANTAGES
Dummies provide various advantages to babies in their first six months. They may:
- soothe and calm
- prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
- improve a baby’s sucking reflexes
- establish feeding patterns for preterm babies
- relieve a child’s stress in a new situation
- counteract pain
- reduce sensitivity in and soreness around the mouth.
The downside of using a dummy in a child’s first few months is that it may cause nipple confusion – where a baby struggles to differentiate between a dummy and the nipple, causing problems with breastfeeding.
Dummies should certainly be withdrawn between the ages of six months and one year, as they may cause drooling and gastrointestinal infections. But their greatest disadvantages lie in the way they may impact a child’s speech and language development. And it is here that nurseries can play such an important part in informing parents about the consequences of prolonged dummy use.
Speech can be used as an umbrella term to include elements such as articulation, voice and fluency, while language is defined as a system of using words to communicate. One study into the use of dummies and its effect on speech and language development revealed that 30 per cent of the children who used dummies developed speech problems, compared with only 12 per cent of those who did not (Carthy and Macdonald 2016).
THE DISADVANTAGES
Dummies impact the articulation of speech and distort vocalisation, preventing babies from babbling or making cooing noises and toddlers from having conversations.
Making and deciphering speech sounds is very technical and, ideally, the examples of sounds should include example words to avoid practitioners becoming confused, e.g. ‘p’ as in ‘pet’.
Dummy use makes it difficult for a child to articulate a variety of sounds, including:
- bilabial – formed by closing or nearly closing your lips (for example, ‘p’, ‘b’, ‘m’ and ‘w’).
- alveolar – formed with the tongue positioned behind your top front teeth (for example, ‘t’ and ‘n’).
- palatal – made by the middle of the tongue touching the hard palate (‘y’ as in ‘yes’ is the only example in English).
- velar – formed by the back part of the tongue against the soft palate (for example, ‘k’ and ‘g’).
Significantly, Dr Elise Baker also notes that ‘an infant with a dummy in his or her mouth would have difficulty imitating facial expression and mouth movements’ (The National Literacy Trust 2017).
Mouth muscles
When a child tries to talk around a dummy, air escapes through the sides of the tongue, which leads to development of ‘slushy’ or lisping speech sounds.
According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (2017), the use of dummies thickens the muscles at the front of the mouth, which can create the development of tongue thrust. This causes difficulties in producing certain sounds – for example, ‘s’, ‘z’, ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘j’, ‘t’, ‘d’ and ‘l’.
The use of dummies also hinders the development of mouth muscles, which further affects speech sand can result in drooling, with sucking producing more saliva.
Dental deformation
According to the Raising Children Network (2016), excessive dummy use causes dental deformation, such as open bite and cross bite. Dental deformation creates extreme difficulties in sound formation. Lots of speech sounds require the front teeth to be closed in order to articulate them correctly, and dental deformation prevents the production of proper sound formation as it allows air inside the mouth which disrupts correct sound production.
Middle ear infections
Dummy use increases the risk of middle ear infection, known as otitis media (OT). A meta-analysis of prospective studies highlighted that the recurrence of OT can impact speech and language development (Roberts et al 2004) as children must be able to hear speech clearly to learn language.
Wider development
Prolonged dummy use can impact speech and language development which, as The Communication Trust emphasises, can in turn affect other areas of development and learning, such as literacy, maths, personal, social and emotional engagement, and behaviour.
According to I CAN, 89 per cent of early years practitioners are worried about language difficulties among pre-school children, believing that good speech and language development is vital to helping children achieve their educational potential.
IN PRACTICE
As a result of my research, we have implemented a dummy policy to help parents stop using the dummy when children start at the pre-school. We give parents written advice in the form of leaflets released by speech and language therapists on the disadvantages of dummies and how to replace them.
When we fill out forms with new parents we discuss the effects of dummies on speech and language. If parents are still using dummies with their children, we agree a plan with them to withdraw the dummy within a certain period. This might start by removing the dummy when talking, using the dummy for sleep but not in the mornings, or introducing the concept of the ‘dummy fairy’.
We also signpost parents to extra help from local Children Centres and health visitors.
In the setting, we encourage and support children to reduce usage, and provide other comforters such as blankets or cuddly toys in place of the dummy to keep children feeling reassured.
Recommendation for future practice
Information about dummies and their effects on speech and language should be translated into different languages and delivered in different formats such as Braille to provide equal access to all parents, regardless of their needs, background and ethnicity.
Trained staff should be readily available to offer appropriate information by understanding parents’ individual needs in order to motivate them to access services.
Did you know?
Dummies date back to 1,000BC, having been found in Cypriot and Roman graves of that period.
In 1901, Christian W Meinecke designed the first dummies made of Indian rubber and with the disk-shaped shield that we recognise today.
Many variations of this design entered the pacifier market once rubber and its associated materials became more readily available and better modified for the purpose.
REFERENCES
Agency (2015). ‘Giving dummies to babies can slow their ability to talk, research suggests’, Telegraph, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11927877/Giving-dummies-to-babies-can-slow-their-ability-to-talk-research-suggests.html
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (2017). Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders, www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/OMD/
Baker, E (2002). ‘The pros and cons of dummies: what a speech pathologist should know’, Acquiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing, 4, (3), pp.134-136.
Bruderer, AG, Danielson, DK, Kandhadai, P, Werker, JF (2015). ‘Sensorimotor speech perception in infants’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112 (44), http://www.pnas.org/content/112/44/13531
Carthy, R and Macdonald, W (2016). Dummies and language development, http://www.mymulberrybush.com/?pforparents=dummies-and-language-development
Harvard Family Research Project (2006). Family involvement makes a difference: evidence that family involvement promotes school success for every child of every age. Harvard Family Research Project: Harvard Graduate School of Education.
I CAN (2006). Speech, Language and Communication Needs and Primary School-aged Children, http://nclmoodle.org.uk/pluginfile.php/64244/mod_resource/content/1/ican%20speech%20and%20lang%20and%20prim%20sch%20chn.pdf
Raising Children Network (2016). Dummies: advantages and disadvantages, http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/should_you_use_a_dummy.html
Robert, J, Rosenfeld, R, and Zeisel, S (2004). Otitis Media and Speech and Language: A Meta-analysis of Prospective Studies, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/3/e238
Talking Point, Do dummies affect speech?, www.talkingpoint.org.uk/parents/speech-and-language/do-dummies-affect-speech
Talking Point, Speech and language in children, www.talkingpoint.org.uk/
The Communication Trust, Speech, Language and Communication Information for managers and school staff, https://www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/media/13565/managers_pack_final_final_8th_may.pdf
The Lullaby Trust (2017). Statistics on SIDS, www.lullabytrust.org.uk/statistics
Radhika Kovendrakumar is deputy manager of All Saints Preschool Harrow Weald in north-west London