Speech-Language Therapy | Services | Bright Speech

Language Disorders

Children with a language disorder may experience difficulties expressing themselves and understanding what others say. This is unrelated to hearing problems.

Expressive language disorders and receptive language disorders are common in young children. They may have trouble with:

• Asking questions
• Naming objects & using gestures
• Putting words together into sentences
• Learning songs and rhymes
• Using correct pronouns, like "he" or "they"
• Starting a conversation and keeping it going
• Changing how they talk to different people and in different places

Many children have problems with both receptive and expressive language.

Speech Sound Disorders

Articulation and Phonology

Children may say some sounds incorrectly as they learn to talk. They learn sounds like p, m, or w earlier, while z, v, or th take longer. A child who does not say sounds by the expected ages may have an articulation or phonological disorder.

Your child may substitute one sound for another, leave sounds out, add sounds, or change a sound. For example, making a "w" sound for an "r" ("wabbit" instead of "rabbit") or leaving sounds out ("nana" for "banana").

Speech Motor Disorders

Speech motor planning is the ability to come up with an idea, plan how to say it, and then finally say it. Muscle tone refers to the strength needed to move the jaw, tongue, and other muscles to speak.

A motor speech disorder is present when a child struggles to produce speech because of problems with motor planning or muscle tone. There are two major types:

• Dysarthria: Often called slurred speech, this is slow, distorted speech resulting from weakness and inability to control or coordinate speech muscles.
• Apraxia of Speech: The inability to make a voluntary movement, like speaking, even if the child can demonstrate normal muscle function.

Fluency Disorders

A fluency disorder means that children experience trouble speaking in a fluid or flowing way.

• Stuttering: Saying the whole word or parts of the word more than once, or pausing between words.
• Cluttering: Speaking fast and jamming words together often.

These changes in speech sounds are called disfluencies. Many people have a few normal disfluencies. But with a fluency disorder, you will have many disfluencies when you talk, making being understood a daily struggle.

Reading & Writing (Literacy)

Literacy is a child’s ability to read and write. These skills are essential for school, work, and home. Early speech and language skills (like learning to say sounds and put them together) help you learn to read and write.

Some children have trouble with reading and writing, such as:

• Holding a book right side up
• Looking at pictures in a book and turning pages
• Telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end
• Naming letters and numbers
• Learning the alphabet

Social Communication

Social communication is how and why we use language to interact. It involves the unwritten rules we learn from our families, friends, and community. There are three major skills involved:

Every culture and family can have its own set of rules. Since they are usually not written down, it can be difficult to know how to act in different situations.