What To Look Out For in Older Children and Young People
All children’s listening, understanding, talking and interaction with other people continues to develop into their teenage years and adulthood.
At secondary school, children are expected to ask questions, explain, negotiate, solve problems and justify their reasoning. There is a lot of new vocabulary to learn and children are expected to use reading and writing as much, if not more than, listening and talking in their schoolwork.
Children with SLCN who continue to experience difficulties with talking and understanding may find this a very challenging time. Their SLCN may affect their abilities to interact with other children, understand what they read, take part in class discussions and remember what they’ve learned.
For some children and young people, their SLCN may only come to light as the demands in school increase. This can however, this can be hard for teachers and others to spot if there is no obvious speech disorder. Difficulties with listening, understanding and talking may be hidden behind difficulties with attention, behaviour and literacy.
Identifying if your older child or teenager needs support
The key points below are organised into four areas of development:
- Understanding
- Vocabulary
- Putting words together in sentences and conversations
- Interacting with others
Young people in school or college see many different teachers so it can be easy for their difficulties to slip through the net. It is, however important that communication needs are identified. If the descriptions below fit your child, they could indicate that he/she needs support with their listening, understanding and/or talking.
What to watch out for:
By 11 Years Old
Understanding
- Looks surprised and uses ways to distract or avoid answering when asked a question
- Watches others carefully to know what to do
- Copies what you’re saying under their breath or quietly to themselves
Vocabulary
- Doesn’t understand that words may have more than one meaning
- Can’t explain what words mean
- Difficulty learning and remembering subject-specific vocabulary
Putting words together in sentences and conversations
- Starts to explain something then gives up
- Talks in very short sentences
- Can’t explain the rules of a game
Interacting with others
- Doesn’t understand jokes with double meanings
- Doesn’t adapt the way they talk to suit different people e.g. friends, head teacher
- Finds it very difficult to use talking to sort out conflicts with friends
By 13-14 Years Old
Understanding
- Difficulty understanding instructions that don’t follow the word order in the sentence e.g. get your homework book, could you?
- Can’t work out meanings that are not obvious
- Always takes things literally
Vocabulary
- Uses very simple words and doesn’t use more difficult words
- Can’t explain the meanings of words in different school subjects
Putting words together in sentences and conversations
- Can’t give clear and detailed explanations of rules
- Can’t tell a complex story
- Doesn’t join ideas ideas together with more complex joining words like ‘so that’, ‘even though’
Interacting with others
- Doesn’t understand ‘street talk’
- Doesn’t understand sarcasm
- Finds it hard to keep a topic of conversation going
- Isn’t confident or clear about how to talk differently depending on whether you’re talking to friends formally in the classroom or just chatting on your way home
By 18 Years Old
Understanding
- Finds it difficult to follow complex instructions
- Often doesn’t understand what they hear or read and doesn’t realise why
- Finds it difficult to ask for specific help when they don’t understand what they hear or read
- In discussions doesn’t pick out themes and meanings that are not so obvious
Vocabulary
- Uses simple words and doesn’t understand or use difficult words to describe e.g. exhausted, meandered, incessant
- Needs to ask other people to explain the words that are used in the classroom and in exams e.g. evaluate, compile
- Doesn’t understand the more subtle differences between similar words e.g. severe, considerable
Putting words together in sentences and conversations
- Talks using short sentences
- Doesn’t use difficult joining words to make complex sentences e.g. provided that, similarly
- Talks in shorter and simpler sentences and conversations, so may lose the ‘thread’ if other people use more complex language
Interacting with others
- Avoids joining in with group social interactions
- Can’t stay on one topic of conversation for a long time and/or flits between topics
- Finds it difficult to maintain a topic in a group conversation
- Finds it difficult to switch between formal and informal styles of conversation
- Finds it difficult to detect nuance
Helping your Secondary School age child;
Helping your secondary school age child to interact with others Here
Helping your secondary school age child to explain and tell stories Here
Helping your secondary school age child to develop their vocabulary Here
The three publications below are available from the Afasic shop, may also be of help;
Transfer to Secondary School; Moving On Moving Up Here
Figures of Speech Here
Young Persons I have DLD Help Card Here
Useful Publications for Young people:
Young People’s Experiences of Hidden Disability in School and College Here
A useful resource for colleges, employers and agencies working with young people who have communication difficulties; Here
