Causes for Concern

© Babs@spdsupport

If you are reading this page because you think that there is something just not quite right with your child's language and communication skills, it is vital that you seek advice immediately. You as a parent have that inner voice that tells you that something is wrong. Listen to it! The sooner you seek help for your child the better the chances of your child making some very good progress after receiving the right therapy and education.

Below is a list of "warning signals" that might indicate your child has Autistic Spectrum/Semantic Pragmatic Language Communication type difficulties. They are purely for your information and should not be used to make a diagnosis. You should raise your concerns with a health professional immediately if you read this list and you feel your child fits many of these descriptions.

• The child has general difficulty understanding what you are saying and trouble expressing themselves in words and sentences.
  
  
• He/she has difficulty finding words.
  
  
• He/she has word order problems.
  
  
• He/she substitutes words for the target word or makes up words for items.eg "weighters" for scales
  
  
• He/she has difficulty following instructions.
  
  
• People can find it difficult to understand what the child is trying to say.
  
  
• The child may have false starts with lots of time fillers and pauses in their speech.
  
  
• He/she might say things at inappropriate times and may sound odd, rude or cheeky
  
  
• The child may use an excessive number of words, but not get to the point.
  
  
• The child shows frustration and tantrumming due to problems with using and understanding language.
  
  
• He/she may have trouble with verb endings, plurals and verb tense.
  
  
• The child may confuse personal pronouns.
  
  
• Spatial concepts such as below, above, under, over, behind,etc. may confuse the child.
  
  
• The child may not seem to understand the concept of time and always believe things are happening in the here and now.
  
  
• Eye contact may be poor or avoided.
  
  
• He/she may struggle to understand complex sentences and require the speaker to speak in shorter sentences and rephrase.
  
  
• The child may not follow multi step directions easily.
  
  
• He/she may suffer from anxiety and may be fearful and show avoidance behaviours.
  
  
• When speaking the child may not provide the listener with all the information he needs to make sense of his/her story.
  
  
• The child may be over literal and struggle to understand idioms, slang and jokes.
  
  
• He/she may constantly interrupt and find it hard to take turns when speaking and also struggle to keep a conversation going.
  
  
• The child may appear odd to others and may make unusual approaches to people, saying the first thing that comes to mind to open a conversation.
  
  
• Play may be affected and the child shows a lack of imaginative play, or role play. Play may be confined to repetitive activities where toys are manipulated rather than played with.
  
  
• The child may not wish to interact with others and may prefer to spend a lot of time on his/her own.
  
  
• He/she cannot retell a story from a book or recount a sequence of events without struggling.
  
  
• The child may echo language like a parrot(echolalia), or repeat learnt phrases back at a later time(delayed echolalia).
  
  
• Learnt phrases may be overused.
  
  
• The child may not ask for help and may not realise he is failing to understand.
  
  
• Writing may be difficult.
  
  
• Reading may be a struggle or very easy but with limited understanding of the storyline.
  
  
• The child may struggle to make inference and deductions from an event.
  
  
• Peer relationships may be difficult and the child may fall out with friends regularly.
  
  
• He/she may lack organisational skills.
  
  
• The child may be highly sensitive to some sounds and not others and may also show some other sensory problems, ie a dislike of certain materials or clothes against their skin, or a dislike of certain foods and textures.
  
  
• The child may show some repetitive behaviours, ie rocking.
  
  
• He/she may have an excellent memory for facts and figures and may have some special interests that they love to talk about non stop.
  
  
• The child may have problems with the rhythm of his speech and speech may sound monotonous or dull, or may be of a different pitch to others.
  
  
• The child uses gestures to communicate, rather than speech.The child may not understand facial expressions.
  
  
• The child may insist on routines and sameness.
  
  
• The child may not stick to the topic of conversation and seem to go off at a tangent when having a conversation.
  
  
• The child may find "wh" questions hard to understand.
  
  
• He/she may ask repetitive questions
  
  
• The child may not understand concepts, e.g. money, time, spatial relationships.
  
  
• The child may be a very egocentric child.
  
  
• The child may always insist on being first or winning at games and may tantrum if he/she doesn't get his own way. May also dislike sharing toys.
  
  
• The child may appear to be "deaf" and ignore an attempt to gain their attention.
  
  
• The child may have difficulty with expressive writing.
  
  
• The child may struggle to understand mathematic symbols and find mathematical problems difficult to understand.
  
  
• There may be some delays or mild problems with motor skills such as learning to ride a bike, using scissors, fastening buttons, tying shoelaces, climbing stairs or climbing on playground equipment.
  
  
• The child may have poor self esteem and suffer with a constant sense of failure.