THE CHALLENGE


For most children, learning to talk is the most natural thing in the world. Communication is a powerful survival tool, one which shapes our future from the moment we are born. The cry of a new-born baby will immediately bring its parents running to attend to its needs. Infants will use gesture and eye-pointing to communicate with a great degree of success. Language, for the majority of the population, is something that is inherent within us, something we develop without any thought as to how we achieve it.

By the time a child reaches the age of five, he can understand most of what is being said to him and he is able to make himself understood to others. He can communicate his needs using complex sentences, and he can organize his thoughts and plan what he wants to do. He can converse with his peers and with adults around him and he can discover new things by asking a range of questions, and problem solve by experimenting through play. He has a wide range of emotions, and is beginning to understand when and where it is appropriate to express these. He actively seeks the companionship of others, and is beginning to work out the rules of social behavior.

However, for 1% of the population, acquiring these skills is the most difficult challenge in the world. Children who have specific speech, language or communication disorders do not learn to talk spontaneously.

They may experience any or all of the following difficulties, some or all of the time : -

• Understanding concepts e.g. size, position, number, colour etc
• Following verbal instructions
• Processing what is being said
• Finding the right word to say
• Putting sentences together in a coherent way
• Remembering a sequence of instructions
• Listening and attention control
• Making the sounds correctly
• Hearing the difference between speech sounds in the absence of a hearing loss
• Understanding inference, sarcasm, humour etc
• Verbal reasoning
• Knowing about how to speak to people in different social contexts
• Awareness of non-verbal cues such as eye-contact, proximity etc