Pediatric Disorders
Speech Sound Disorders (SSDs): Any difficulty with producing and organizing speech sounds and segments.
You might notice: Substituting one sound for another (like “wabbit” for “rabbit”), leaving sounds off the ends of words, or speech that's hard for unfamiliar listeners to understand.
Childhood Apraxia of Speech: A pediatric neurological speech sound disorder. The precision and consistency of movements during speech production are impaired due to difficulty planning, programming, and sequencing the muscles that contribute to speech sounds.
You might notice: Inconsistent errors on the same word said more than once, groping or visible effort when trying to speak, and speech that's harder to understand the longer or more complex the phrase.
Receptive Language Disorders: Difficulty understanding spoken language, including words, directions, or concepts other people are communicating.
You might notice: Trouble following multi-step directions, seeming to ignore or misunderstand questions, or relying heavily on routine and visual cues to get by.
Expressive Language Disorders: Difficulty using language to express thoughts, needs, or ideas, even when understanding is fine.
You might notice: Limited vocabulary for their age, short or grammatically simple sentences, or frequent word-finding struggles (“um... the thing... you know”).
Pragmatic Language Disorders: Difficulty with the social side of communication, meaning using language appropriately depending on the person, place, or situation.
You might notice: Trouble taking turns in conversation, difficulty staying on topic, missing social cues, or language that comes across as overly literal or one-sided.
Stuttering and Cluttering
Stuttering is an interruption in the flow of speaking due to disfluencies. It is the most common fluency disorder and can affect the rate and rhythm of speech. Stuttering also typically involves
- inappropriate reactions of others—the negative reactions toward stuttering from typically fluent speakers who do not stutter—or
- negative internal reactions to speaking—the feelings that a person who stutters has about their stuttering.
Cluttering is characterized by
- a rate that is perceived to be abnormally rapid and/or irregular;
- an excessive number of nonstuttering-like disfluencies;
- frequent irregular patterns of pausing; and/or
- frequent over-coarticulated speech.
Pediatric Feeding Disorder (PFD): Any difficulty a child has with oral intake as compared to same age peers. PFD is associated with medical, nutritional, feeding skill, and/or psychosocial dysfunction.
You might notice: “Picky” eating; coughing, choking, or gagging during or after eating or drinking; pain or discomfort shown by crying, back-arching, grimacing, or pulling away; or eating very few foods regularly (such as fewer than 20 foods, or completely avoiding entire food groups).