Things to look out for

For some children, developing communication can be a very difficult process and they may need extra help. By 5 years you may see the following:

• Difficulty with abstract ideas such as size or time.
• Difficulty with complex sentences.
• Not having the right words to be able to say what they want.
• Difficulty organising ideas in order.
• Missing out some words. For example, saying 'playing ball' instead of 'Doggy is playing with the ball’.
• Speech that may not follow a logical order.
• Talking about lots of different topics in the same group of sentences.
• Not using the right sounds so that their speech is difficult to understand.