FL Therapist: 364% Increase of Kids with Speech Delays Since Masking

According to a Florida therapist, she has seen a 364% increase in the number of children with speech delays in 2021, an increase she links to facemasks. It would seem to be common sense that children who never see the faces of other people will be less able to communicate and be developmentally challenged, and data is beginning to emerge to back up that prognosis.

This therapist isn’t the first one to raise concerns over masking, either. While this study on the NIH website was not talking about children, it noted potentially widespread and serious health problems caused by masking. Remember that lack of oxygen—which the masks cause—can lead to brain damage. While the therapist specifically mentions the lack of ability to see people’s faces as contributing to speech delays, how do we know we are not also doing permanent brain damage to our children through masking? To back up my point—two scientific experts wrote in Nov. 2020 about how “poor oxygen delivery to the developing brain, ultimately lead[s] to motor and cognitive deficits.” In other words, similar symptoms to what the therapist was noticing.

“A therapist from Florida has expressed her worries over facemasks being related to speech delays within young children. Her claims have been backed up by quite alarming statistics.

After noting a significant increase in the amount of children having to suffer from speech impediments and other mask-related disorders, a speech therapist in Florida is raising concerns about the CDC’s emphasis on mask use.

According to ABC news affiliate WPBF, Jaclyn Theek, a clinic director and speech-language pathologist at the Speech and Learning Institute in North Palm Beach, stated that she had seen a 364 percent uptick in the total count of referrals for children with speech delays in 2021, implying that mask-wearing may very well be fueling unprecedented harm to healthy childhood development.

‘This has been a very challenging year,’ Theek mentioned at the end of 2021, explaining that before the outbreak, just 5% of her appointments were infants and toddlers, a figure that has subsequently risen to 20%.

Although ‘there’s no research out there yet saying that this [mask wearing] could be causing speech and language delays,’ Theek is ‘most definitely’ persuaded that it is indeed a ‘factor,’ since several parents allude to the situation as their kids being ‘COVID-delayed.’

‘We are seeing a lot of things that look like autism. They’re not making any word attempts. And not communicating at all with their family,’ explained Theek.

‘It’s very important that kids do see your face to learn, so they’re watching your mouth,’ added the pathologist.

Even though Theek is completely right that no peer-reviewed research has discovered a particular dilemma with speech disruptions triggered by pandemic initiatives like masking, a study out of Rhode Island in August 2021 uncovered that kids conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic have substantially reduced perceptual capacity than their pre-pandemic equivalents.

‘Across all measures, we found cognitive scores were significantly reduced during the pandemic by 27 to 37 points (or almost two full standard deviations),’ wrote the researchers.

‘We did not find significant differences in birth weight or gestation duration overall in the pre vs during pandemic children,’ they noted, implying that the issue is caused by environmental factors including masking and isolation rather than physical illness or starvation.

Parents have noted a distinction in their pandemic-born kids particularly in contrast to their elder children born prior to the so-called public health measures, in conjunction to reservations expressed by speech therapists as well as various medical specialists [emphasis added].”

I would like to conclude by adding something that is to some extent my own personal opinion (though based on scientific facts)—please comment to share your thoughts on this. Fear can have dangerous psychological effects that change how people, including children, behave. Anxiety disorders, PTSD, trauma, etc. are usually linked to or due to fear, yes? That’s what scientists and doctors say. Children over the past two years have had fear perpetually hammered into their heads as a sort of obligation.

Fear your family, fear your friends, fear your teachers, fear every person you meet—that’s what the masks and other Covid restrictions have taught children. They cannot sit next to their friends in school without masks, because of the fear that they may give each other Covid. They cannot go to activities that do not allow for social distancing—or perhaps their activities have to be entirely virtual—because of the same fear. I even know some parents who do not fear Covid, but tell their children to mask up in many situations anyway, because otherwise they will get in trouble. Whether the cause of fear is a virus or a rule enforcer, the reason for wearing the mask is always fear.

The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child wrote in 2010 about how “early exposure to circumstances that produce persistent fear and chronic anxiety can have lifelong effects on brain architecture.” The mask is a symbol of fear. Even if the child is also exposed to people without masks on a regular basis—every time he puts on his mask, it is a reminder to him to be afraid. What kind of irreparable harm are parents or other adults doing to children by making them mask up in fear?