Developmental Language Disorder – Increasing Our Awareness

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a common communication disorder that interferes with the development of language. It is a neurobiologically-based disorder, which means it is caused by differences in the brain or nervous system (the spinal cord and nerves).

DLD is a ‘hidden disability’. You can’t look at someone and see their DLD. But it has enormous knock-on effects. It can affect social and emotional well-being as well as success at school and work.
For too many people with DLD, what you do see, over time, are the build-up effects of the disadvantages DLD causes: low attainment and employment, poverty, isolation, confusion, homelessness, crime, and mental health challenges as a result.

DLD is common, affecting seven per cent of Australians. That’s one in 14 people – or two children in every classroom!

It’s more common than autism, which affects around one per cent of Australians; and more common than ADHD, which affects around five per cent. DLD has been called the most common childhood condition you’ve never heard of.

While many people have never heard of DLD, we are all likely to know several people with it. You have probably understood their situations in terms such as: struggled at school, slow to learn, a quiet guy, he can’t remember things well, man of few words, doesn’t listen. DLD may include all these characteristics. Assessing for DLD helps us accurately fit these experiences into a learning profile and show us the support responses we should make.

What is it like for people with DLD?
Here’s a scenario to help you feel something of what DLD might be like.
Imagine yourself in a land where the locals speak no English. You have some ‘phrasebook’ ability in their language. You can order food – though it helps if there are pictures. You can check-in at your hotel – though when the transaction doesn’t go through, you are stuck. You can’t communicate that you have money in your account and need time to contact your bank. You try to communicate this. Blank stares. Your frustration and sense of indignity build. It shows in your face and posture. You raise your voice. (Natural enough responses to frustration.) The clerks discuss together taking furtive glances at you. You can’t understand what they say. Security arrives. You state your indignation. The guard speaks in long, firm sentences. But you can’t understand him. You’re excluded from all the meaning that is being exchanged about you. You feel stupid. But you know you’re not stupid. You just can’t understand this language or use it back. You can’t write or point to words to help as you can’t read or write this language. Your exasperation about not knowing how to get your need across shows in a fidgety clenching fist. The security guard takes your arm and moves you on.
Now imagine this as your daily experience in your own culture… in your mother tongue. That’s DLD.

If this scenario was really happening for you, you’d probably have a mental monologue of self-talk to help you stay calm and think-through some solutions. But a mental monologue is done in language. People with DLD don’t have a ‘mental mother-tongue’ to fall back on in this way. Language itself is the very ability that is weak.

Language is a superpower inside our heads allowing us to think, look at things from other people’s perspective, manage complex meaning, and so much more.

People with DLD feel all the emotions that you did. (And do). But have more limited ability to process and reconcile those emotions in language. They can be much more readily left stuck with their feelings, awash on confused waters of only partly grasped, partly expressed meaning.

It’s not their fault. DLD brains are ‘wired’ differently. They can’t quickly and easily attach meaning to symbols (words – spoken, signed, written). This hidden disability is lifelong.
As society we are quick to explain such scenarios as ‘attitude’ or ‘behaviour’. Such responses unjustly blame the victim – just as you felt unjustly dealt with when the guard moved you on.

What can we do about DLD?
As society we should step-up and understand what is really going on.
DLD has long been known to speech pathologists, psychologists, and teachers. But known by other names and through the blur of widespread elitist cultural assumptions – ‘he’s slow’, ‘what would you expect from that family/neighbourhood’. But our scientifically-based knowledge has been growing, and we’ve been actively teasing out wrong assumptions. Now we confidently know a lot about DLD.

We know for sure that with intensive intervention at school and at any time in life, we can make BIG, functional differences to the lives of people with DLD – for their independent participation and choice, and for their positive contributions to community and the economy.

We have a long way to go in delivering gold-standard support and intervention in schools, institutions and workplaces. But awareness is being raised and there is much peer-reviewed evidence about intervention that works for people with DLD. Intervention can make a powerful difference. It needs to be intensive, tailored to the individual, and functional.

Investing in supports for people with DLD is good for the whole community and the economy. For the person with DLD, return on investment will come as increased skills and participation in meaning and life. For society, return on investment will come as higher literacy rates, better social and workforce participation, and less social spending in the government departments that, later in life, pay for the accrued disadvantages of DLD – such as health, justice, and housing.

How much more dignified and sensible it will be when this spending is made as abundant early intervention so those disadvantages don’t build up dishonourably in the first place. By serving the enrichment, participation and dignity of our people, the same enrichment, participation and dignity will flow into our economy.

How can speech therapy help people with DLD?
Speech and Language Pathologists (speech therapists) can assess, diagnose and support people with Developmental Language Disorder.

Speech therapists can recommend strategies to help and offer interventions to improve the skills that are impacted by a person’s DLD. We can also work with teachers or teaching assistants to create individual programs for students with DLD. This might include activities to improve skills like vocabulary, narrative discourse (using language to describe events and express ideas), and phonological awareness (the sounds in spoken language).

DLD is a lifelong condition, but speech therapy can make a big difference to a person’s ability to understand language and communicate their thoughts, feelings, needs and desires.

People with DLD are more likely to have anxiety, depression and low self-esteem due to frustration resulting from communication difficulties. Speech therapy can give people with DLD the tools and confidence to participate in community and have independence and choice.