Talking and Listen are crucial skills for following instructions, maintaining attention, demonstrating appropriate behaviour, expressing wants and needs, learning to read, write and spell, and for social interactions with others.

Speech Therapists (and less so Occupational Therapists) can directly help children develop these crucial skills.

Children who struggle with talking and listening can have difficulties with:

Talking

• Talking clearly (so that strangers can understand them)
• Expressing their needs
• Finding the right words to use
• Using sentences that are appropriate for their age or using “jumbled’ sentences

They may:

• Use gestures more than words
• Get easily frustrated and stop trying to talk or communicate
• Use jumbled sentences
• Use sentences that are immature for their age

Listening

• Understanding what others are asking them or telling them
• Answering questions
• Following directions
• Understanding stories
• Playing with peers

They may:

• Appear to ignore others
• Need lots of repetitions of an instruction
• Look to others to know what to do
• Play next to their peers instead of with them

Other Useful Resources

• Understanding Language
• Speech Development in Children
• Conversation Skills For Children