Comprehension Difficulties

The day your child does what you tell them to do is a memorable day! It is amazing when your little toddler actually goes and gets the ball, puts his nappy in the bin, or gives Daddy the shoes following your instruction.

Children develop comprehension skills starting with the recognition of a few familiar words, e.g. ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’, ‘ball’, ‘bottle’ etc and as the child develops they start to follow simple phrases e.g. ‘find the ball’, ‘hug Mummy’, and later more complex commands such as, ‘put the red ball in the basket’. By school age they are starting to understand more complex grammatical and morphological markers, e.g. ‘The hat was not his ‘The mice ran away quickly

Children can sometimes present with Receptive Language Disorder which means they do not develop / understand language as well as their peer group. Children with receptive language difficulties can often appear naughty because they simply do not understand what is being said to them. Coping strategies are often subtle and can allow them to fly under the radar. Children with receptive language difficulties are often very smart and can demonstrate excellent learning skills in non-verbal assessment.

At a higher level children with receptive language difficulties can present with verbal reasoning difficulty, often miss the hidden meaning in jokes or idioms and find it hard to understand and retain the story in more complex narrative.

Receptive language difficulties can affect dynamics at home between a parent and child, socially with peers, and in school when instructions and curriculum content becomes difficult to follow.

There are a variety of causes although often the cause of a language difficulty will be unknown:

• Genetic factors
• Brain trauma
• Difficulties during pregnancy
• Auditory Memory weakness
• Auditory Processing difficulties
• Hearing difficulties – conductive hearing loss

Justine can provide specialist assessment and effective treatment for children with Receptive Language Delay / Disorder.