Community of Research and Practice
The Talk To Your Baby Community of Research and Practice is an online network open to everyone who shares our interest in the development of young children’s speech, language, and communication. It brings together researchers and academics who are particularly interested in the development of theory, investigation and enquiry, with practitioners who are working with children and families to promote high-quality practice at home, in early years settings, and across local communities.
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Dummies
By Cathy Hamer. Posted on 15 Aug 2011 at 15:21
What advice do you give?
In some areas midwives recommend no dummies to establish breast feeding.
Others suggest dummies for sleep times to reduce SIDS.
We've found very little research on dummies. Can you help?
3 Replies
bskilton replied on 5 Sep 2011 at 10:13
As an advisor to Early Years settings, I recommend that practitioners respect children's attachments to their comforters, but try to support them to increasingly manage without them: always taking out to talk; playing games with sounds and praising children's efforts to communicate, so that they are positively rewarded for their efforts to communicate.
EKirk replied on 5 Sep 2011 at 10:53
As a developmental psychologist, I have an interest in the impact of sucking on a dummy on a child's language development. I've come across some research that you might find interesting.
Dummies have been identified to be detrimental to a child’s language development for a number of different reasons. Firstly, dental problems associated with prolonged sucking could lead to speech articulation problems (including distortion of the fricative and alveolar phonemes, Boshart, 2001). Furthermore, with the oral cavity partially obstructed by the dummy, babbling and imitation of sounds and words may be limited and vocalizations made with the dummy in the mouth may be distorted, or the child may not attempt to speak at all (Van Norman, 2001). Children who suck dummies are also at a greater risk of developing otitis media (World Health Organization, 1989), an inflammation of the ear that is well-documented to negatively impact upon language development (Niemela, Pihakari, Pokka, Uhari, & Uhari, 2000).
Dummy sucking has also been linked to intelligence. In a large study of almost a thousand people born in the 1920s and 30s, researchers Gale and Martyn (1996) identified dummy use as a significant predictor of intelligence in later life. The researchers suggest that this negative relationship between dummy use and intelligence is because these babies received less mental stimulation. They add that as dummy sucking has strong soporific effect (makes babies feel sleepy) these babies have less interest in their surroundings and so learn less.
I'd be very interested to find out about other research that has looked at the relationship between dummies and language.
Jane Young replied on 15 Sep 2011 at 17:04
We have worked with our midwives and Speech and Language Therapy teams to address this issue. The midwives recommend that dummies are not introduced within the first 4 weeks of a baby's life so as to establish breast feeding. However there is some confusing evidence around SIDs but this seems to be balanced out by the positive effects of breast feeding. I would advise parents to talk to their midwives about this so they can make a decision based on the most up to date medical evidence.
In terms of speech development we advise to keep dummies for sleep times only after the age of 6 months. This is for a number of reasons for Speech and Language Therapists, the primary ones being;
- they interfere with the onset of babbling;
- they can lead to a long-term habit which, in turn can lead to children's speech sound development being disrupted;
- there is some link with increase risk of otis media (glue ear) which can affect the development of listening, attention, language and speech.
I would advise parents to contact their local children's centres speech and language team for further advice and support about the use of dummies.