Receptive language includes what a child comprehends (what’s coming IN to the brain).  This may be demonstrated through pointing and  identifying language concepts, following directions and/or commands, and comprehension of spoken or written language.  Expressive language includes how a child communicates including verbalizing, signing, gesturing. babbling, jargon, using AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices,  or a mixture of these, aka total communication.  Pragmatic language (social language) includes various types of play (functional play, symbolic play, solitary play, onlooker play, parallel play, pretend play), joint attention, greeting others, and engaging others in conversations appropriately.

Normal disfluencies can occur when a child or even an adult is searching for the correct word or idea and instead of fluency speech there may be a pause, stopping, or an inserted “um”.  However, stuttering includes repeating part of a word or whole words, prolonging sounds, excessive insertions of uh’s or um’s, and blocks (long pauses where the child wants to speak a word or words but is unable to.

Phonological (articulation) disorders include patterns of substitutions of sound in words.  An example of this may include substituting /r/ for /w/ or “uh” sound (wed vs. red, watuh vs. water), substituting /l/ for /w/ lion vs wion, substituting /k/ and /g/ for /t/ and /d/, car vs. tar, go vs. do.  Articulation disorders may also include a frontal lisp which is exhibited when there is tongue protrusion and a lateral lisp which demonstrates incorrect airflow and sounds  like slushy speech.  SLPs address difficulty with overall intelligibility or difficulty understanding your child speaking.

Childhood apraxia of speech is not a “developmental delay” of speech.  A child with developmental delays with speech follows the typical path of speech development but does so more slowly than children typically acquires skills.  Apraxia is a speech sound disorder.  This disorder is classified as a motor speech disorder.  Apraxia may be: difficulty with consistently speaking sounds/words with the exact same form, difficulty with or distortion of vowels, and/or underlying motoric speech difficulties.