Hamayal 
Aphasia is a language difficulty that happens when the parts of the brain that handle language are injured, most often by a stroke. It can affect speaking, understanding what others say, reading and writing — sometimes all of these, sometimes only some. Aphasia does not take away a person’s intelligence, knowledge or personality: the thoughts … Read more
The signs of feeding difficulties in children can appear in several areas at once: how a child chews and moves food in the mouth, how safely they swallow, how their senses react to food, and how much variety they can manage. One difficult meal rarely means very much on its own. It is the pattern … Read more
Fussy eating is a common phase: a child is selective about food but is growing, has energy and is generally well. A feeding difficulty needing assessment looks different — strong distress around food, a very restricted and shrinking range of foods, gagging on many textures, coughing when swallowing, or mealtimes that dominate family life. The … Read more
Paediatric feeding difficulties are challenges with eating, drinking and swallowing in babies and children. They range from common fussy or picky eating patterns to difficulties with chewing, swallowing safely, or accepting different food textures. A speech and language therapist with feeding expertise is one of the professionals who can assess how a child eats and … Read more
AAC stands for augmentative and alternative communication — all the ways a person can communicate besides, or as well as, speech. A communication board is one of the simplest forms of AAC: a board showing pictures or symbols that a child can point to, look at or touch to share a message — asking for … Read more
Communication is much more than speech. A non-speaking child is still communicating — through gestures, expressions, sounds, pictures and behaviour — and support means giving them more ways to share their messages while presuming they understand and have plenty to say. Responding to every form of communication, and offering tools such as AAC (augmentative and … Read more
Social communication is the way we use language to connect with other people — chatting, taking turns, reading facial expressions and tone of voice, and understanding jokes, hints and feelings. For autistic children and children with ADHD, this side of communication often works in its own distinctive way, with real strengths alongside areas that can … Read more
A speech delay means a child’s sounds, words or language are developing more slowly, but broadly in the usual pattern. Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is different: it is a difficulty with planning the movements needed for speech, so words often come out inconsistently, and moving smoothly from one sound to the next is the … Read more
Childhood apraxia of speech is a difficulty with planning and coordinating the movements needed for speaking. The muscles of the mouth, lips and tongue usually work well — the difficulty lies in the brain’s messages that tell those muscles which movements to make, and in which order. Because those messages can get jumbled, a child … Read more
Speech sound disorders are difficulties with producing the sounds of speech clearly and in the right patterns, so that a child’s talking is harder for other people to understand. They include difficulties with making individual sounds, difficulties with the sound patterns of a whole language, and, for some children, a difficulty with planning the movements … Read more