Phonological delay usually presents when the child is late developing speech sounds or has speech difficulties. There are a number of names for this type of disorder such as developmental phonological disorder or articulation disorder etc. Phonological development describes the process where the child learns new sounds, stores them, and can access them to form words correctly. This is a very complex system and is linked to the child being able to organise and discriminate new sounds. When there is a phonological delay there is often also an associated difficulty with language and literacy.

Within the icommunicate website we will separate speech difficulties under clearly defined headings. We have a separate section for dyspraxia and articulatory difficulties, but are aware that difficulties at a phonological level may be linked with these speech difficulties.

If you believe your child has a phonological disorder it is important to visit your local speech and language pathologist/therapist as soon as possible to discuss speech therapy and the need for some specialist intervention. The speech pathologist / therapist can work with your child and give you exercises and activities to help with their speech development and phonological skills.  Phonological disorders may also effect your child’s ability to learn to read and spell so it is important to begin therapy sooner rather than later.   

Therapy for phonological disorders may differ somewhat to normal articulation therapy. Through the use of a psycholinguistic assessment we can focus on different areas of the child’s speech and language production and pinpoint areas of difficulty so that we can target our therapy appropriately. Therapy may initially have more of a listening bias than a speech bias with a lot of different auditory discrimination tasks of words and sounds.

Phonologically based disorders of speech are complicated and can require regular speech and language therapy. icommunicate plans to devote a lot of time to this area of speech and language development and link it in with reading and language difficulties.