Does your Child Have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)?
Our Expert Speech & Language Therapists Provide Evidence Based, Quality Therapy to Help Children with DLD
Some Facts About DLD:
DLD is diagnosed when a child has difficulties acquiring language that persist once they go to school and possibly beyond that.
A child with DLD will encounter language difficulties that are not linked to another condition such as Autism, hearing impairment or brain injury.
Children with language delays caused by learning English as an additional language are not classed as having DLD.
The most noticeable difficulties children with DLD tend to have are using words and sentences to express their ideas, feelings, wants and needs.
Many children with DLD also have difficulties with understanding language (receptive language).
Children with DLD can struggle with any of the following:
Listening and focusing
Processing and remembering spoken language
Following instructions
Understanding questions and narratives
Using grammar correctly
Putting words in the right order
Understanding and using vocabulary
Knowing how to act in social situations, e.g. how to join a conversation
Understanding humour, jokes and non-literal language
Expressing their feelings through words
Regulating their behaviour
Knowing how to fix misunderstandings / fallings out
Recent research has shown that on average, 2 in every class of 30 children will experience DLD severe enough to hinder their academic progress. *
*(Frazier Norbury et al. 2016)
How Good Speech and Language Therapy Can Help Children With DLD:
Identifying, assessing and diagnosing DLD in children.
Supporting parents through their child’s DLD diagnosis.
Providing therapy for children with DLD.
Providing programmes of work for in between therapy sessions for parents / teaching assistants.
Supporting schools to optimise the school environment to help children with DLD learn.
Helping teachers and parents to use communication styles that help children with DLD understand and develop their language skills.
Helping teachers create communication friendly classrooms.
Raising awareness, educating and training other professionals in identifying and working with children with DLD.
How Our Speech and Language Therapists Support Children With DLD
We assess each child’s needs holistically and design our treatment plans around the unique needs of each child. At the centre of everything we do are the goals, aspirations and expectations of the child and their family.
Here are some of the many evidence-based therapy approaches and frameworks we are specially trained to use to help children with DLD develop their communication skills.
Black Sheep Press programmes
Vocabulary Enrichment programme
No Glamour Sentence Structure programme
Narrative therapy
Word Aware
Elklan approaches
How can we help you and your child?
If you interested in how our expert speech and language therapy can help your child with DLD, click below to request a free telephone consultation with one of our therapists or to book an initial assessment appointment. We will assess your child’s strengths and needs and design a therapy package to suit your child’s unique learning style, and your budget. We can also support children and young people in the over one hundred schools that commission our schools speech and language therapy service.
