Some children suffer frequent cases of otitis in preschool age, a condition that according to research on middle ear infections in children would be a possible obstacle in language development.
Approximately 90 percent of children under three years of age have ever suffered an episode of acute otitis media, a situation that occurs to a greater extent in the children of smoking parents and that could be avoided by eliminating tobacco from the family environment.
From 0 to 3 years is a key stage in language acquisition. It is believed that children learn between 2 and 4 new words every day, a vertiginous development in language development that can be truncated by undiagnosed ear infections or that they do not receive proper treatment.
Otitis is usually a very frequent infection in young children and occurs when a bacterial or viral infection spreads to the middle ear, accumulating pus or fluid behind the eardrum, sometimes causing quite severe pain.
For obvious reasons, children who suffer from it repeatedly take longer to incorporate new words into their vocabulary and to develop a complete phonetic repertoire. It is affected both the vocabulary acquisition as to phonological awareness, two of the fundamental pillars of reading.
A longitudinal study noted that children with frequent untreated ear infections were much more likely to have problems with post-reading.
Although it is possible that in the future we can have a vaccine against otitis, at the moment the most convenient thing is to take precautions to avoid ear infection and in case of suffering it, make sure that you receive the appropriate treatment.
