Speech Delay and Language Disorder in children

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"Speech delay" is a commonly used term to describe when a child is slower in developing his speech and language skills. In the toddler years, parents may commonly report concerns that their child "has yet to say their first words" or is "not able to use sentences to communicate". 

For some kids, concerns may be flagged for their pre-linguistic skills as well. Pre-linguistic skills are the foundational skills required before a child learns to speak. Some examples of these skills include joint attention, eye contact,  imitation, using gestures, simple turn-taking etc.      

Depending on your child's presentation, a Pediatric Speech Therapist will perform a comprehensive assessment to evaluate the areas of strengths and needs specific to your child's communication profile. For school-aged children, standardized language assessments (e.g., CELF-5, Preschool Language Scale) may be administered to gather a detailed analysis which can provide information about the presence and severity of a language disorder. Results from the assessment are used by your speech therapist to set specific goals to be targeted during your child's speech and language therapy sessions.  

The assessment findings may reveal that your child requires specialized support from a speech therapist for the following areas:

• Pre-linguistic skills and social interaction: e.g., a child may need support to maintain back-and-forth social interaction, establish joint attention etc. 
• Receptive language (i.e., Auditory Comprehension): e.g., a child may have difficulties following long and complex instructions, responding to questions, understanding the meaning of words etc. 
• Expressive language (i.e., Verbal Expression): e.g., a child may find it hard to construct meaningful sentences, express their thoughts and ideas in a cohesive manner, tell stories in a disorganized way, make grammatical errors and/or use non-specific words when trying to give explanations   
• Higher-level language skills: e.g., a child has difficulties ‘reading between the lines’, and hence show difficulties in making inferences, predictions and problem-solving 

Due to their specialized training in language development and knowledge in language disorders, a Speech Therapist would be able to evaluate your child’s language abilities and pinpoint his/her strengths and needs. 

Targets for intervention are selected based on the findings from the speech and language therapy assessments conducted. Some areas that may be targeted in language therapy for kids include:

• Pre-linguistic skills: e.g., initiating, responding and maintaining back-and-forth social interactions  
• Vocabulary: e.g., building on a child’s vocabulary inventory, word-learning strategies 
• Grammar: e.g., word structures (e.g., tenses, plurals), sentence structure (e.g., building simple and complex sentences)
• Listening Skills: e.g., understanding instructions and processing longer auditory information
• Narrative Skills: e.g., story-telling skills, incorporating story elements into a recount 
• High-level language skills: e.g., using ‘critical-thinking’ skills to make deductions about a storyline (e.g., What do you think the character will do next? How do you know the character is feeling disappointed?) 

Speech Therapists utilize a range of strategies to assist your child in improving their abilities to use the above language concepts and gain mastery in various skillsets for language construction. It can be thought of as building and/or “repairing” the underlying language foundation to result in a more efficient system. This would allow your child to become better at communicating his ideas, and do so in an efficient and meaningful manner. Depending on your child’s age, interests and needs, our experienced Speech Therapists will use different activities, toys, books and/or games to work on the different language targets in the treatment plan. 

Early intervention is crucial in tackling speech delay! We would love to help your child unlock his/her potential. If you have any questions about your child's speech and language development, feel free to contact our speech therapists for a consultation!  Follow our blog where we share tips on how to encourage language development.

At Jubilant Speech Therapy, our speech therapists also provide speech language therapy in Mandarin Chinese. We understand that children living in Singapore are immersed in a multilingual and multicultural environment and will benefit from this specialized speech and language therapy service to support their communication needs.