Does your child have any of the following speech, language and communication needs? If so, Eden Speech and Language Therapy can provide advice and therapy to support the following difficulties:
Speech sound difficulties
- Speech sound disorder is an umbrella term that indicates your child has a difficulty using the correct sounds in words. Further assessment (sometimes over time) can enable a more specific diagnosis of your child’s speech sound disorder. Speech sound difficulties fall into two separate areas, those that indicate a linguistic difficulty and those that indicate a motor speech difficulty.
- A child with a linguistic difficulty presents with a phonological disorder. They can articulate individual sounds but have difficulty organising speech sounds in their brain and selecting the correct sound to use in their speech. They make patterns of errors, sometimes these are typical substitutions (for example all ‘k’ sounds are produced as ‘t’, they say ‘tat’ for ‘cat’) and sometimes they are atypical (for example a child who does not produce any consonant sounds at the beginning of words). Their overall intelligibility can be quite significantly reduced.
- Sometimes a child has difficulty producing a specific sound (for example l, r, th) and will most likely have an articulation disorder. You may feel that most of their speech is clear but they have difficulty with the pronunciation of certain, specific sounds. Sometimes this becomes more obvious when they start school, or as they progress through their schooling.
- Another type of speech sound disorder is Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia (DVD) or Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). This a motor speech impairment and can cause severe speech sound difficulties with limited sounds and reduced overall intelligibility. These children may have just a few words (or no words yet), and these may be very unclear. However some children may have just a small presence of these characteristics within their speech, presenting with some mild features of DVD.
- Children can present with both linguistic and motor impairments within their speech. The role of the speech and language therapist is to determine the relative presence of each, before setting appropriate treatment goals.
Language difficulties
- Sometimes toddlers have difficulty acquiring their spoken language, but they appear to understand language appropriately and develop other skills appropriately. These children may be described as late talkers. Often they may require support to develop their spoken language and they catch up. Other children may continue presenting with a language difficulty as they start school. If these are not resolved, continue to persist despite therapy, impact on their everyday situations and are not associated with another condition, they may have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).
- Language difficulties cover many areas. Children with receptive language difficulties have difficulty understanding spoken language. They may struggle to follow instructions, to process information or to follow a conversation. This also includes the ability to understand concepts and the meaning of words. Children with expressive language difficulties struggle with their spoken language. This may include difficulty producing first words, linking early words together or being able to construct a sentence accurately, using the correct grammar. It also includes their use of vocabulary and word retrieval skills.
Eden Speech and Language Therapy 