Dr. Rainer Patzlaff is a teacher at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, and a member of the board of the Association of Waldorf Schools in Germany. This booklet, originally translated for and published in Kindling, the UK Journal for Steiner Early Childhood, gives a strong picture of the loss of speech and language abilities in children today, explains why technically transmitted speech diminishes brain function, and encourages us to counter is with life-giving, humanly connected speech.