Children affected with the language disorders have the problem understanding what people say to them and are unable to express their thoughts through speech. These children have a very basic vocabulary and often their sentences are incomplete and have trouble with answering simple questions. Treatment is necessary to ensure they do not experience emotional problems and academic struggles. There are three kinds of language disorders; receptive language issues where the child has difficulty comprehending what others say, expressive language issues involves problems expressing their thoughts and mixed receptive-expressive language issues that affect both speaking and understanding abilities. The developmental language disorders are a common problem among children and are not associated with their intelligence level.
Causes
Although the exact cause of the language disorders is not known, research suggests the genetic and hereditary involvement. Around 40% of the affected children have a family history of language impairment. It is also associated with the prenatal nutrition where the women taking prenatal folic acid supplements are less likely to have children with the language disorder. Some of the other conditions that can also present this disorder include Down syndrome, intellectual disabilities, premature birth and autism spectrum disorder.
Symptoms
There are no laboratory tests to diagnose this disorder and is evaluated by the speech pathologist or the physician based on the delay of the child to talk. The language disorder may be suspected when the child is not using sentences that are normal for the age. Some of the common symptoms of developmental language disorder include not babbling by 10 months age, not pointing to things by 18 months of age, not using two words combination by 2 years of age and having less than 50-word vocabulary by 2 years of age. Children with the receptive language issues exhibit problems with comprehending what others say which can be hard to identify among the very young children. The children with the expressive language issues can talk but are difficult to understand.
Diagnosis
The initial step is to evaluate the hearing condition and to rule out hearing loss as this can be common with language problems. A speech therapist can help evaluate the child’s language development by testing their expressive and receptive language. The speech therapist will also analyze the child’s language abilities in various situations such as playing certain games. Once the diagnosis is made, an effective treatment plan will be devised to help with the child’s language development. In certain cases, the laboratory test may be necessary to rule out various causes.
Treatment
The early intervention is essential for these affected children and is estimated that around 70% of these cases show improvement after treatment. The treatment includes the speech therapy that will focus to work on building the vocabulary and by improving the grammar. Children who also have attention deficit disorder will require medications to improve attention. The psychotherapy may be beneficial for the children with emotional difficulties including frustration or depression resulting from the language problem.
References
http://www.childneurologyfoundation.org/disorders/language-disorders/
https://www.understood.org/en/tools/parenting-coach
