Both children and adults may have communication problems. Sometimes the reason has been identified but on many occasions,especially concerning children, families may not find it easy to identify the issue.
Many young people have communication problems arising from:
- Delayed development
- Disordered development
- Difficulty in putting sentences together so that they can be understood (expressive language difficulty)
- Difficulty in remembering words and their meanings
- Difficulty in understanding what others say (receptive language difficulty)
- Otitis media (glue ear) causing intermittent hearing impairment which affects learning
- Pragmatic difficulty (in using spoken and non-verbal communication to interact socially)
- Selective mutism (only speaking in certain situations)
- Speech dyspraxia / verbal dyspraxia (a motor coordination difficulty affecting pronunciation)
- Using the wrong sounds in speech and not improving following the expected developmental pattern (phonological difficulty)