Talking Point offers information and advice about children’s communication.

According to Talking Point over one million children in the UK have some kind of speech language and communication need. This is known as SLCN for short.

Every child is different. Their needs depend on different factors, including:

• Which areas of speech, language and communication they struggle with.
• How severely these areas are affected.
• What skills and strengths they have.
• How they need to use their skills.
• Their level of confidence and self-esteem.

There are broadly four areas of needs:

• Difficulties with speech sounds
• Difficulties with understanding language Also known as receptive skills.
• Difficulties with producing language. Also known as expressive skills.
• Difficulties with using language appropriately in context. Also known as social skills or pragmatic skills.

Some children may have difficulty in only one of these areas. Others may have difficulty in more than one.

Some children may have difficulties that can be helped quite easily. Others may have greater needs. Some children will have life-long difficulties that will affect them significantly.

Sometimes children develop their skills in the usual way, but at a slower rate. This is often called a ‘delay’ or ‘delayed speech and language development’.

Sometimes children may have specific difficulties with speech and language, and this is called ‘SLI’, which stands for specific language impairment.

Difficulties with speech sounds

This can include difficulties with:

• Muscles used to create different sounds. This can be due to muscle weakness and may be linked to difficulties like cerebral palsy.
• Sending messages from the brain to make different speech sounds. This may sometimes be described as ‘dyspraxia’.
• Learning and using different sounds to make words. This can be called ‘phonological difficulties’.

Phonological difficulties (difficulties with sounds)

Most children follow a similar pattern in learning sounds. Some children have difficulty in learning and using sounds in the right places for words.

Young children with phonological difficulties

During pre-school years, children will learn lots of different sounds. They will also learn how to organise these sounds into words.

Primary-aged children with phonological difficulties

Usually, most children will be using a full range of speech sounds by the time they are 5 years. Some children however, will have difficulty in developing these skills.

Primary-aged children may be experiencing difficulties if they:

• Only use a small number of sounds.
• Are swapping one sound for another e.g saying ‘tat’ instead of ‘cat’.
• Are missing the ends off words.
• Have difficulty with vowel sounds e.g. saying ‘poor’ instead of ‘pear’ or ‘pot’ instead of ‘pat’.
• Have difficulty with long or complicated words like ‘banana’ or ‘aeroplane’.

Good sound skills are needed when learning to talk. They are also important for developing reading and spelling.

For more information go to: Talking Point

Written by Rachel Harrison, speech and language therapist, on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services.