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Difficulties - how might children be affected?
- Motivation - Some children seem not to want to communicate with
people in certain circumstances or settings.
- Social development
might be immature or unusual. Poor knowledge about social
behaviour and communication affects
a child’s ability to relate to others. They will
experience difficulties in understanding and responding
appropriately to communication and in using language
to express their needs.
- Conversations - the ability
to share conversations can be limited. Some children
might have learned to talk
but
are unable to communicate very well with others…they
might have a wide vocabulary and adult-sounding sentences,
but find it hard to make friends and their understanding
of what others say is not as good as might appear.
- Limited
imagination is apparent in some children’s
play; these children might have problems developing abstract
concepts and language - there is a strong association
between imaginative play and language development.
- Attention
and listening - poor attention and listening skills can
affect speech and language development. These
children might have problems with motor skills (for example
clumsiness), levels of activity or perception.
- Understanding what others say might be poor – evident
in inability to follow directions or instructions and
low appreciation of stories.
- Expressive skills - thinking
of words, putting words together, making sentences, telling
about own experiences
and story-telling might be weak.
- Speech and language
difficulties can be associated with reading and
writing difficulties. There is a close
link
between speech, language, spelling and reading.
- Speech sound system - speech might be unclear, even to people
who know the child well.
- Movements of the lips, tongue and face muscles might be weak, slow or not very well
coordinated.
- Some physical disabilities can impact on
communication. Some less obvious language and communication
difficulties
might coexist with speech problems which have an ‘obvious’ physical
cause, for example cleft palate.
- Emotional - the child
might have low self-esteem.
- Behaviour might be disruptive
or distressing, due to poor communicative ability.
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