WWU Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences faculty develop early supports for Spanish-speaking youngsters with language delays
When it comes to toddlers, the chattier the better.
Language development is fast and intense between 18 months and 2 years of age. And researchers know the more these young children communicate, the better they’ll do later in kindergarten and elementary school – and beyond.
So for toddlers with language delays, early support pays off exponentially through the years. And Western Washington University researchers in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences are working to make sure more youngsters in Spanish-speaking families get the benefit of early intervention, too.
Associate Professor Heather Moore is helping to lead a four-year, $2 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education to develop a curriculum for Spanish-speaking families with tailored online lessons, weekly professional coaching, and peer support.
“We really want to support families in their heritage languages,” Moore said. “Oftentimes, families with children with language disabilities or delays are told by providers and doctors, it’s going to be hard for your child to learn language, so just speak to them in English because that’s what they’ll need in school. And that’s just one of the most horrible myths out there, because children with disabilities can learn multiple languages, just like everybody else, and have the right to know the languages in their home and their community.”
About 30 percent of kids in early childhood support programs may come from Spanish-speaking households, Moore said, but less than 5 percent of speech language providers serving them speak Spanish.
Moore and researchers at the University of Oregon are drawing from decades of early childhood language research as well as insights from advisory boards of providers and Spanish-speaking families to develop the curriculum, which will be delivered in English and Spanish through a web-based app called Comilia Online.
Families and caregivers are already nurturing these youngsters’ language development during everyday activities like mealtime, putting on shoes, feeding the cat, and going to the grocery store together. Moore and her colleagues are working to empower families with tools to encourage their little kids to talk throughout the day.
“What we know with children who have a low rate of communication when they’re young — even if they just prefer to spend more time on their own — get less practice and less engagement with their caregivers communicating with them, and that starts to compound over time,” Moore said. “We have all kinds of strategies we can teach parents to just entice their children to communicate more often.”
This summer, Moore and her colleagues will recruit Spanish-speaking families, including families in Whatcom and Skagit counties, to give the curriculum a test run. Next, they’ll run a trial with more families to measure the effectiveness of the Comilia Online program.
Moore has worked with young children with disabilities and their families for over 20 years in a variety of home, community, school, and clinical settings. Before coming to WWU in 2019, she spent more than a decade at University of Oregon, where she developed programs for early childhood language support with associate professors Lauren Cycyk and Stephanie De Anda, language development experts. The three are continuing their work with the Comilia curriculum to improve access for Spanish-speaking families.
Moore also works with student research assistants, and one of Moore’s former WWU students, Anna Kunz, is working through the University of Oregon as a project manager on the grant.
To learn more about the Comilia program, contact Heather Moore at mooreh22@wwu.edu.
Mary Gallagher covers Western’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences for WWU Communications and edits WWU’s Window magazine and the Family Connection Newsletter. Email her story ideas at mary.gallagher@wwu.edu.