[Parents' concerns about language development of their children aged two to seven studied with the CBCL.]

This is a pilot-study in Iceland of parents' concerns about language development of their children. Little is known about the rate and the expression of such concerns and such data is important for developmental surveillance.

This study forms a part of a larger study of the mental health of Icelandic children aged 2-18 years with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Parents' concerns of language problems were studied with the CBCL in 444 children aged two to seven sampled on a national level in Iceland. These concerns were examined by indipendent speech and language therapists and categorized as speech or language concerns, and graded by their possible seriousness.

The CBCL picks up host of reasons for parents' concerns. According to the parents' completion of the CBCL about 13% of the sample were considered to have some language problems. The frequency of responses showing language problems was not related to the age of the children. The male-female ratio was 1.5:1. According to speech and language therapists' categorization of parents' concerns, parents described speech problems in majority of cases (72%) as opposed to language problems (18%). These specialists considered parents' concerns to reflect more serious complaints as the children grew older.

The majority of parents' concerns were considered to reflect real problems according to specialists. There were indications that parents do not make a distinction between language and speech. This needs to be studied further in order to better inform parents on language development and its disorders, and to contribute to a better focused developmental surveillance.