ABSTRACT
Children can have difficulty expressing themselves for three main reasons.
They may have word-finding difficulties. This means that the child uses a small vocabulary of frequently used words and often cannot say precisely what he has no difficulty understanding. He has to use other words as substitutes, such as ‘play on’ or ‘sit on’ the horse rather than ‘ride’ the horse. There will be a high number of non-specific words such as ‘get’, ‘put’, or ‘thingy’. Some children can explain themselves another way while others break down and cannot go on. This often relates to auditory memory difficulties. For ideas and strategies to help, see the EV section.
The grammar they are able to use is immature even when they can understand other people’s sentence grammar perfectly well. There is an order to the development of sentence grammar. For instance, the child will say T and ‘me’ before using ‘myself’, and ‘doggy run’ before ‘the dog is running’. For ideas on strategies to help develop sentence grammar, see the EG section.
Some children have difficulty producing mature speech sounds, in which case they are likely to be seeing a speech and language therapist. These difficulties usually mean that the child’s phonological system – the system by which the child can recognise and reproduce individual sounds in clusters (such as ‘sk’) and sequences (such as east/eats) – is delayed or disordered. The same difficulties mean that the child is likely to have problems acquiring phonic skills at the usual age, with likely literacy difficulties – in particular with spelling. In their early years, these children will need specialist support. Advice on how to manage unintelligible children is given in section S. Advice is also given in this section on how to manage children who stammer, and those who rarely speak in school.
