02 Nov Speech and Language therapy in for children with expressive language delays/disorders
Are you afraid of expressive language disorder in your child?
When your child’s communication skills seem to be behind those of their friends, it can be alarming. The more you know about the delay in expressive language, the better you can take immediate action and do what’s good for your kid. Knowing all about the effects of language disorder will make it less scary to face. At our Speech and Language Therapy, we are providing both in home and tele-therapy services for language and speech improvement for both kids and adults.
We’ve put together all you need to understand in this guide if you think your child has difficulty in expressive language. To know what this indicates and what to do about it, continue reading.
What is an expressive language disorder means for your kids
It is very difficult for the kid with expressive language disorder to communicate or express information in voice, written, sign language, or gestures. (The difficulties of expressing themselves in handwriting is not apparent for preschool children since they have not begun formal education.)
Some children in the first three years are late in achieving traditional language milestones but gradually catch up with their peers. These kids have generally known as ‘late-talkers.’ An expressive language deficiency or other language deficiency can be diagnosed in children who appear to have difficulties with verbal speech.
Expressive Language Disorder Signs
Typically, when children have expressive language delays, they will have difficulty forming the words into sentences or phrases accurately.
For example, they might not use the correct verb tense at the right moments, or they might unintentionally leave primary keywords out of a sentence. In much shorter sentences and words, they can also speak than other kids their age do and use a smaller vocabulary.
Here’s a closer look at some of the difficulties that kids with this condition appear to have.
- Sequencing
It will also be challenging for children with expressive language disorders to bring language together logically. When they recount a story or fail to appropriately order the steps of action, they would have a hard time placing events in the right order.
Due to these problems, discussions with these kids are always hard to understand. However, to help your child become better at sequencing, you can use interactive games.
- Correctly Using Adjectives
It is also difficult for children with this form of language delay to use descriptors the correct way. To make the language more exciting and more simple, words such as adverbs and adjectives are used. However, kids with a language disorder can never use these words at all or may not use them correctly.
- Grammar
Another thing you’ll find in kids with a language delay is using proper grammar. They might use incorrect grammatical markers or leave them out. The word pieces and short terms that go within longer words to make certain statements have meaning are grammatical markers. Speech can be choppy without grammatical markers, and sentences appear to be short. To help them put together phrases that are easier to learn, you should teach a child proper grammar.
- Social Skills
Many kids with expressive language disability mostly have social skills problems, sometimes referred to as pragmatics. They may not know how to use words to communicate with other children properly.
- Asking Questions and Giving Answers
It requires a high level of language skills to ask questions and have adequate responses. First, to know the context of the query, comprehension is required. Then, the kid has to bring together the right answer to the question. Next, they have to speak out loud the answer. In this phase, kids with language delay problems typically have a hard time.
- Vocabulary
Limited vocabulary will make it difficult for kids with language delays to express what they want to express. They’ll need more support than many other kids will learn new words, and they may have a tough time recognizing the words they need.
- Figurative Language
Children with a delay in expressive language fail to grasp figurative statements, such as metaphors, similes, and idioms.
- Inferences
Typically, these kids have a tough time making inferences from the stuff they see all around themselves or what they read.
- Mutism
In some environments, many kids with a language delay would fail to speak. Selective mutism refers to whether a child can talk but would not do so in school or public settings. In certain cases, they can always talk, such as when they’re at home. It is possible to treat selective mutism. However, for language delay and speech difficulties, selective mutism treatment varies considerably from other forms of treatment.
What Causes Expressive Language Delay?
It is not always clear, in most situations, what the cause of these language delays is.
Some kids struggle with language development and typically improve in all other fields. Others, such as autism, down syndrome, or hearing disorders, have other developmental difficulties.
Expressive language disorder also goes with a receptive language disorder, which suggests, in addition to using it, that they have a tough time interpreting language.
Expressive language problems often start at birth as a developmental problem. On most occasions, when certain normal development has already arisen, the disorder is developed later in life. Trauma may cause by expressive language disorders, such as a blow to the head. Expressive language delays can also cause medical problems.
Expressive language disorder often extends through family members or generations, implying that genetic delays may sometimes be present.
What To Do Next?
You should take children to a speech pathologist or speech therapist for a consultation if you feel your child has an expressive language disorder, based on the above symptoms. To assess their listening, you can also make an appointment with an audiologist.
To make these appointments, you don’t need a doctor’s referral. To evaluate the modes of language use that are problematic for your child, a speech pathologist may perform evaluations. These evaluations are quick and simple and will allow you to know how to move forward. Online speech therapy that you can do conveniently at home is one of the best options for treatment.
If you are interested in finding out more information about Expressive Language Disorder or need an appointment with a Therapist, contact us at Vancouver speech therapy.