Language development disorder: causes and symptoms
A language development disorder is by far the most common language disorder. It mostly affects children of kindergarten and elementary school age. Here you can find out what is behind it, what the causes are and how you can recognize a language development disorder in your child.
What is a language development disorder?
A language development disorder is a form of language disorder in which a child does not develop age-appropriately in their language skills. The disorder only affects the area of language. The rest of the child’s development is normal. In the case of the language development disorder, both temporal and content-related deviations from normal language development are possible. This means that the different stages of language development can be delayed, but also simply different than normal or not occur at all.
The language development disorder should not be confused with the language development delay, in which language development proceeds in the same stages as in children who develop normally, just more slowly.
Symptoms of a language development disorder
The language development disorder can affect your child’s understanding of language, vocabulary, phonetic differentiation, grammatical skills and storytelling skills. Possible signs of a language development disorder in your child can be:
- Your child does not react to noises in the first year of life , it does not make eye contact with you or falls silent after it has actually already started babbling. These babbling phases are part of the normal language development of a child. You can find more information about this in our article “ Learn to speak ”.
- By the time your child is about a year old, they can’t understand simple commands and can’t speak their first words. A lack of imitation attempts can also be an indication.
- Your child does not seem to understand you at the age of two, speaks far fewer than 50 words or cannot yet speak two-word sentences.
- Your child does not understand simple stories at the age of three or cannot yet form three-word sentences.
- At the age of four, your child often speaks slurred and forms grammatically incorrect sentences. It can’t even play simple content.
- At school , your child develops reading and writing problems. You can read more about this in our article on dyslexia .
If you notice such signs in your child, you should definitely talk to your pediatrician and have your child examined. Even if your child’s language development has been normal up to now and it suddenly makes no further learning progress, these can be signs of a language development disorder.
Causes of a language development disorder
A combination of different causes often leads to a disruption in language development. These can be:
- Genetic or neurological causes : Language disorders can be inherited or triggered by congenital disorders in the brain.
- Medical causes : A speech development disorder often occurs in connection with sensorineural hearing loss, deafness, intellectual disability or autism.
- Prolonged artificial respiration of a baby : In this case, there can be a delay in the formation of sounds and in learning to speak.
- Lack of language stimulation : For your child’s language development, it is important that you talk to them a lot. This stimulates your child’s love of language. If a child has little incentive to speak, a language development disorder can also develop.
- Mental damage : Your child’s relationship to speaking can be disrupted by certain negative experiences. That would also be a reason for a language development disorder.
Treatment of a language development disorder
Speech therapy treatment is usually recommended for speech development disorders. In such a therapy, the speech therapist tries in a playful way to awaken your child’s joy in speaking. In addition, listening, oral motor skills, concentration and the ability to learn should be improved through targeted exercises.
The exact duration and frequency of your child’s speech therapy treatment depends on the extent of the disorder and your child’s stage of development. As a rule, speech therapy sessions take place one to three times a week. Of course, your help is also important. Talk to your child often and a lot; that helps him learn. Your speech therapist will certainly have a few exercises that you can do at home with your child.
If your child suffers from a language development disorder, it does not mean that they will have to struggle with it their whole life. Through speech therapy treatment, your child can gradually catch up.