I am giving away a brand new book to TWO readers of this blog. If you or someone you know is having concerns about a child’s speech or literacy development, please contact me with your address and I will ship one of these books to you (completely free of cost.)

Now that I am a DBI (Dad Blogger of Influence), I’ve been asked to review products that parents may find useful. I was recently asked to review a book entitled, “Beyond Baby Talk” – a guide to language and literacy development. I will be honest…I did not read the book in its entirety. Instead, I jumped around to the chapters that I felt would be of most use to me. I was very happy to find that it had extensive information regarding a child’s language development between the ages of 2 to 4.

When Justin was much younger, his daycare suggested that we should have his speech, hearing, and cognitive abilities tested. They believed that his “baby talk” (while completely appropriate for his age) may have been a sign of developmental issues. As new parents, we had no idea what to do with this information. We went online for advice, but the websites on this topic were either contradictory to one another or self-serving (“Buy My Product”) to whoever was doing the posting. Ultimately, we had him tested through LAUSD and then again through a specialty program (which we ended up working with for about a year) that I was referred to after tracking down the President of the Pediatric Speech Therapy organization for her recommendation.

The point here is – I wish I had a book like “Beyond Baby Talk” at that time to give us guidance on what to look for developmentally. Sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know. If you need this book, just let me know and I will ship one to you!