A lot of kids just learn to talk. They just learn by hearing it. They are the lucky ones.

What if they can hear, and they’re clever kids, and there isn’t anything else medically going on, but they STILL have trouble understanding and using language?

It’s likely they have a developmental language disorder.

6.4% of 10 year old Australian children have developmental language disorder (Calder et al., 2022). That's more than Autism, more than ADHD. More than physical disabilities.

The level of difficulty in Developmental language disorder does vary. But, at its heart, it is defined by difficulty with language that does not go away, despite support. Despite thearpy. Developmental langauge disorder is life long.

And like other life long disorders, it deserves support.

Unlike other life long disorders, it’s completely hidden, and if often completely un-recognised. It is often a struggle to qualify children with DLD as their primary diagnosis for NDIS support, despite affecting their

• Communication

• Social participation

• Emotional regulation

• School engagement

• Learning

• Transition into the workforce

And instead of support, people with DLD struggle through school. Struggle to understand complex language. Learn compensatory strategies, but always find it difficult and energy consuming to use verbal communication. To work with the one medium that people usually take for granted.

Children with DLD often also struggle with reading, and can often struggle with the language based concepts of maths. They might have trouble accessing the right words, or putting sentences together. They might have a lot of trouble understanding directions and need support with their language planning.

Children with DLD show impacts in many of the same areas that are impacted by Autism.

There is a high risk of mental health disorders for children with DLD. Parents should be aware of this and look at getting support early.

Speech Pathology intervention can support both children and adults to develop their language skills. We can support parents to advocate for their children to receive appropriate support within the school system, including reasonable and necessary adjustments to presentation of class work and to encourage the school to proactively support reading and math skills that can be impacted.

The DLD project has a great evidence brief which is well referenced that can be sent to teachers, local area coordinators, and other parties to support them in understanding the impact of DLD.

I strongly encourage any parent who has a child who has a language disorder to access support as soon as they can, and to learn as much as they can about DLD.