Unlocking childhood language

Communication is fundamental to a child's wellbeing and development, but if language skills are delayed, it can impact a child for life.

When University of Waterloo psychology professor Daniela O'Neill created the Language Use Inventory (LIU) to assess language development in children aged 18 to 48 months, she knew it would be a powerful tool.

Early detection of children requiring spoken language intervention could vastly improve that child's ability to catch up to peers. But if she disseminated the LUI using traditional publishing methods, her ability to keep improving it could be stymied.

So O'Neill, director of the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Child Studies, ventured into a whole new realm, and added "entrepreneur" to her already impressive credentials.

Her company, Knowledge in Development began distributing the LUI to speech-language pathologists and other professionals in 2009.

Empowering parents

This year, with the assistance of the Accelerator Centre, it began offering a public version that parents can use, too, called My Child's Talk as a first step.

"It's been half hard, half easy," O'Neill says of her entrepreneurial effort. "I think I've always had a bit of it in me. [But] you know nothing as an academic. It's a different language and there are different goals."

Her company employs local printers and web developers, offers a scholarship for University of Waterloo students doing postgraduate studies in language development, and has been developing an online professionals' site so speech-language pathologists can administer the LUI online.

And now, parents of two and three-year-olds, who fear their children’s talking might be delayed are being empowered to get help early using My Child’s Talk as a first step. Waiting lists can be very long for specialists to just find out if there's a problem."

"The fact that University of Waterloo has such a spirit of entrepreneurship helps an academic take this route. This is how knowledge translation happens," she says.

This is a work in progress. As an academic working to take its ideas into the mainstream, I think I'm treading new ground."